


Stars Will Fall

by fardareismai



Series: This Rose is Extra [11]
Category: Doctor Who, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, Kissing, Sad, Scary, Sexy, Swearing, episode rewrite, psychopaths, sexual innuendo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-24
Updated: 2014-03-11
Packaged: 2018-01-13 15:23:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 46,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1231504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fardareismai/pseuds/fardareismai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock Holmes and Rose Tyler have found their fairy tale. But every fairy tale needs a good old fashioned villain, and when Moriarty discovers that Sherlock's princess is actually a Big Bad Wolf, he knows just how to blow Sherlock's house down around his ears.  A Reichenbach Fall re-write for This Rose is Extra.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. He's Back

**Author's Note:**

> Obligatory long author's note on the first chapter of a new story!
> 
> So... this is Stars Will Fall, and it is finally ready! This story is quite a bit different from any of the previous stories in this series, in part because the episode is so very complicated, and in part because I was inspired by the brilliant works of SquirrelWho, Lupa Eira, and TempestInTime on ff dot net. If you like RoseLock and you haven't read their works, go do that now. This can wait.
> 
> A bit of a warning here at the beginning: as I say, this one is different. It's much darker, a little bit sexier, and a lot sadder than anything I've written thus far. I'm rating it M because of all of that. There's nothing graphic or explicit, but there are psychopaths and sociopaths and people who make bad choices. Just letting you know now.
> 
> As ever, all the thanks, love, and affection in the world go to WhoLockGal from ff dot net and Tumblr. Another person who, if you're not reading her work, you're failing yourself because it's brilliant.
> 
> Thanks and love to my Husband who puts up with a temperamental writer on a much more regular basis than anyone should be forced to do so.
> 
> These characters and situations do not belong to me. I'm just here for fun and make no money off of it. Greatest respect and love to the BBC.

In March he was released. They didn't tell him that he would be released so when, a week before, he began to hear a constant refrain in the back of his mind- _who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_ \- he did not connect it with his freedom.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

The day they released him was the first time that he dreamed. A woman-shape, but made of golden light. Beautiful and terrible.  _I create myself._

_The Big Bad Wolf._

Not three days after his release, his beloved made the newspapers. He was caught hand-in-hand with a pretty young blonde. They were photographed eating chips.

"My, my, Sherlock. Have you forgotten me already? This infidelity will not be forgotten."

He looked her up, of course. Rose Tyler. He remembered some five years ago when she had appeared on the scene. A bleach-blonde heiress with no ambition but the next cocktail and another night at the newest nightclub. He had been just beginning to build his empire at the time, and she was  _boring_.

Yet, here she was, photographed with Sherlock Holmes, the only interesting person that he had ever met. He had been ten when he had realized how stupid people were. How little they saw and understood. How much better he was than any of them. He knew that Sherlock kept pets like John Watson, but he'd never kept a  _girl_  before. He wondered what this meant.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

Well, Sherlock could simply be using her to scratch an itch. It was a surprising thought, but not impossible. Sherlock Holmes giving in to something as ordinary as lust.

"You disappoint me, Sherlock."

As he looked at the picture of the two of them, the song in his head got faster and louder.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? The Big Bad Wolf. TheBigBadWolf._ _**Who'safraidoftheBigBadWolf?** _

He balled up the paper and threw it across the room, unable to stand looking at the picture for another moment. He realized, suddenly, that he was shouting, and he quieted himself. Trying to drown out the song in his head. But with the picture out from in front of his eyes, it had gone back to a background hum- easily ignored.

 _The Big Bad Wolf._  What did it mean?  _The Big Bad Wolf._

He found himself at the library, researching every mention of the Big Bad Wolf that he could find. The Big Bad Wolf was hungry. He devoured little girls, and little pigs, and little goats. The Big Bad Wolf consumed. The Big Bad Wolf was always cut open in the end, however. They always got away. They always survived and the Wolf died. But the Big Bad Wolf shook their foundations- he blew down their houses, and got through their doors, and got under their skirts.

He was the Big Bad Wolf.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

For over a month, Sherlock was out of the papers. His little blonde toy was there, but he was never with her. Perhaps a client, or a fleeting fancy. He would have expected someone cleverer, someone more polished, someone prettier, if Sherlock had taken to women. Then again, there was something to be said for the well-trod path.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

Then there was the case in Plymouth. He had watched Sherlock fly off. He had kept tabs on him. He had purchased every local paper from Plymouth that he could get his hands on. The case was insulting and he felt bad for Sherlock. A bit. Then Sherlock came back to London and suddenly he was being photographed with the Tyler bitch every week. She and Sherlock went to dinner together. They went for walks. She was seen going to his flat several times a week. She and John were caught out going to the pub.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

Then there was the photograph of them kissing at the Vitex party. The two of them were photographed hand-in-hand all over town. Sherlock was caught smiling. The more he saw the two of them together, the louder the song got in his head.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? The Big Bad Wolf. TheBigBadWolf._ _**Who'safraidoftheBigBadWolf?** _

Sherlock was getting his fairy tale. The beauty who would put up with the beast. But every good fairy tale needed a villain.

Sherlock was solving crimes. There was the painting of the Reichenbach Falls. There was the banker who had been kidnapped. There was the spy. Sherlock had gotten a new name. Boffin Sherlock. Cute.

He still liked the hat.

The girl was less boring than he had thought. Sherlock had taken a liking to her. When she had appeared on the scene, she was blonde and foolish and boring. But she had gotten a university degree under an assumed name. She had a military ranking and training. She was not the woman that the tabloids saw. He could see because he was extraordinary. Sherlock must see it too.

He tried to get into her files, but they were heavily protected. He could see that even touching them would have him found.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

As passionate as he was about Sherlock, he had not spent his months entirely idle. He had purchased a computer and begun his masterwork. He'd had the concept in prison, but they had allowed him not even a pen and paper to take it down. Now he was free.

Sherlock would find his house of straw blown down.

He had a feeling that the linchpin in that destruction was the pretty, blonde Rose Tyler.

He couldn't wait.

_The Big Bad Wolf. Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? The Big Bad Wolf. The Big Bad Wolf._

_Burn like the sun._


	2. Chaos Descends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So the first chapter yesterday got the most overwhelming reception I've ever known. Thank you so much.
> 
> Here's chapter two, I hope you like it (nearly) as much.
> 
> As ever, these characters belong to themselves and their respective creators, none of whom are me.

**11:00 AM, The Tower of London**

James and Chet sat in the guardroom of the Tower of London, watching the monitors as tourists filed in past the Crown Jewels. A small man in a baseball cap stopped in front of the case that held the jewels and, rather dramatically, put on his headphones and turned on his music. He held his arms out, as though the music were washing over him. Other tourists looked at him like he was mad and James snorted as he watched the feed. Chet got up to get coffee for the two of them. As he returned, the alarms went off and chaos descended.

**11:00 AM, The Bank of England**

The head of the Bank of England sat reading the stock ticker as his personal assistant brought him tea. He announced a few facts, hardly acknowledging the young man. Money was moving, being gained and lost and the Bank of England stood strong. Suddenly, as he sipped his tea, he felt a peculiar rumbling in the building. An alarm on his computer began an insistent buzz and a warning that the vaults were opening popped up on his screen and chaos descended.

**11:00 AM, Pentonville Prison**

The chief warden of Pentonville Prison was sitting down with the heads of every division to discuss the parole requests waiting on his desk. He was a hard man and preferred prisoners behind bars, and he said so. They had reviewed and rejected three cases and everyone had gone for a coffee break when the alarms began to blare. A guard stumbled into his office panting; having run from his station to tell the warden that chaos had descended.

**11:00 AM, Torchwood Headquarters**

The Torchwood director and his daughter were going over morning reports with tea and biscuits set between them.

"You all right?" Pete asked, as Rose tossed down a folder with unnecessary force and a heavy sigh.

"Sorry," Rose said, leaning back in her chair and running both hands through her hair. She looked up at her father, a crease between her brows. "Do you ever get random anxiety? Like you can't help but think that something terrible is coming for no good reason at all?"

"Yeah," he said easily, hoping to give comfort to his not-quite daughter. "I think most people do."

"Yeah, okay," Rose said with a sigh, dropping her head into her hands. "Just feels a bit like a lunatic, you know?"

"Did you know that in ancient times, they thought that exposure to the moon was what drove people mad?" Pete asked, sipping his tea. "'Swhere we get the word 'lunatic.' On the radio on the way in to work this morning they were saying that it's a full moon tonight. A wolf moon, they called it."

Rose looked up at her father sharply. "Wolf moon?" she asked.

A voice in her head- a voice from the past- whispered, " _there's something of the wolf about you... You burnt like the sun, but all I require is the moon._ "

"You all right, Rose?" Pete asked. His daughter's face had gone quite pale, and her eyes had gone distant. "If you're feeling off, maybe you should take the day off. Long weekend and all that. You could talk your Sherlock Holmes into taking a trip with you."

Rose's eyes returned from wherever they had been. "Yeah," she said with a twist of her lips, "he doesn't really do that sort of thing."

"What sort of thing?"

"Take vacations."

"Bit like you then?" Pete asked, blue eyes sparkling.

"Bit, yeah," she answered with a smile.

Their cell phones, both sitting on Pete's desk let out identical alarms made tinny by the poor quality speakers. Rose grabbed for her phone, recognizing the alarm that meant her files had been touched and asked, "Mycroft again?"

Before Pete could answer, their laptops also began to issue alarms. Rose watched Pete read his screen and every drop of blood drain from his face.

"What is it, Dad, what happened?"

Pete turned the laptop around so that she could see the screen. Every firewall on every file in Torchwood was down. Every piece of information that they had ever had was unprotected. Someone had hacked Torchwood.

Chaos would descend.

**11:00 AM, 221B Baker Street**

The detective and the doctor had vowed to spend a quiet day. The detective would spend much of his day at his microscope. He was examining several toxic plants native to England and was considering the benefits of distilling some poison simply to have on hand. He couldn't remember if his poison distillery was in a single piece, and he did not want to use the one that he occasionally used for water or liquor on poison. That could be tragic.

The doctor wandered through the kitchen in his bathrobe, hair and skin still damp from his shower. He poured himself a cup of tea from the kettle and continued into the sitting room to read the paper. He noted a buzzing noise.

"You've got a message."

"Yes, it keeps doing that." Sherlock had changed Rose's notification from the standard, so he would know if it were she, otherwise he had no interest in speaking with anyone just now.

John settled into his seat with the paper and all was quiet for a few minutes.

When Sherlock's phone went off again, and John checked the message, chaos had descended.

**11:15 AM, The Tower of London**

As the closing strains of the Blue Danube Waltz played over his headphones, he drew his fingertips across the gold-leaf arms of the throne. He did love drama. It was also impossible to deny the sensory pleasure of real gold on the skin. It was such an interesting metal, and it made people go so mad.

He had something better than gold, however. He had the key. Today had gone off without a hitch and Sherlock would burn.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

A chime from his mobile interrupted the waltz and he saw that the files he had requested from Torchwood had arrived. He had Rose Tyler, if he wanted her.

Sherlock wanted her, so he did as well. He must find out what Sherlock found so interesting in the little chav.

No time to read just now, however, his fans were here. They burst through the doors in neat formation, guns held on him where he sat, bedecked in the Crown Jewels.

"No rush."


	3. Torchwood Falls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Guys, the response to this story has been completely overwhelming, and I can't say anything except for this: Thank you all!
> 
> If I were able, I would give each of my readers and reviewers a cookie. I'm not able so you'll have to live with just my eternal love, affection, and a new chapter. A nice long one this time (that's what she said).
> 
> Sorry... I may have suddenly become a 12-year-old boy for a moment there. My apologies.
> 
> Anyway, thank you all. Every one of you is beautiful, brilliant and wonderful!

"Less than an hour!" Pete Tyler was pacing his office. Two weeks had passed since Torchwood's security had been breached, and every day new stories appeared in the papers that could only have come from their files. "Those bloody firewalls were down less than an hour. Less than _half_ an hour. How much information can you possibly pull in less than half an hour?"

"Practically everything, really," Rose said in a toneless voice, watching him pace from her chair.

"And are the leaks from Research and Development? Are they about advances in medical science or computer technology? No. All that got out was aliens. We're a laughingstock!"

"You're not."

Pete turned to her, the shame and regret clear on his face. "We were gonna tell you, Rose."

"Yeah? When?"

"Soon, Rose, very soon."

"Pete." He winced. Her tone wasn't angry, but she only called him 'Pete' when she couldn't bring herself to call him 'dad.' "I've been listed as the Director of Torchwood since I came to this universe. It's been nearly six years. Why was I never told?"

"You didn't need to know, sweetheart," he said, pleading with her to understand. "It was only on paper and you were still in university, and making your way in Torchwood, and you were still mourning the Doctor."

"I've been out of university for three years and leading field teams about the same length of time, but I still wasn't told. There's another question though, _why_ was I the director of Torchwood?"

"Your mum and I thought it would help keep you safe. That position comes with diplomatic immunity and every protection under the law, and quite a few protections above the law. We thought that if someone found out who you really are, you'd need all of that."

"But you didn't see fit to tell me about it. Torchwood is going to be shut down. My story didn't get out, but every stupid story about us chasing down an apparent alien that ended up being next-door's pug, or great-aunt Millie snoring did. You're right, we _are_ laughingstocks, and I didn't know that my name was at the top of that list until I read it in the paper."

He knelt in front of her and took her hands, trying to force her to meet his eyes. "I'm so sorry, Rose."

She rose and pulled her hands from his. She walked to the door of the office and opened it, a clear invitation for him to leave.

"Go home, Pete. The Director of Torchwood has work to do."

She saw him out without a smile or a word of love. She might someday forgive him this, but not today. Not when she had so much to do and the responsibility had been thrust upon her without warning.

She returned to the desk and sighed. She had two main responsibilities- her first was to the Earth and its protection, the second was to the employees who made Torchwood. Since the first story had appeared in the paper, she had been receiving resignation notices. She could not fault them. Some of the cleverest people in the country worked for Torchwood and they could read the signs. As those signs got clearer, more resignations came in. Rose made certain that every person who was leaving would have their pension. Patents from the institute were apparently submitted in the name of the Director, so she held several medical and technological patents that were extremely lucrative, and one benefit of Pete not being the official director of Torchwood was that he was still CEO of Vitex, and Vitex's money was Torchwood's. All of the money was going to support her employees until they found new positions.

She was left with a small handful of names now, those who had not left. Mickey, Jake, Ianto, Gwen, Tosh and Owen all remained. Rose was surprised and pleased that Owen was going to stay with her. Dr. Rory Stewart from Cardiff, in part because he looked too young to get a position elsewhere, would stay. Two scientists from Research and Development in London and one in Cardiff, and five names from various field teams in both cities. 15 people and Rose remained of a staff of over 200.

Her responsibility to the Earth meant that Rose had called a meeting of everyone that she had left. Those stationed in Cardiff were video-conferenced in, and everyone from London was gathered in one of the medium-sized conference rooms with space to spare. Rose entered the room to find that conversation halted with her entrance. She told herself not to think about it- of course they were talking about her, and the situation, and everything that was happening. Maybe they were talking about Sherlock- he'd been all over the papers lately. Maybe they were talking about Sherlock and her very public, fairly ugly breakup. Maybe they were just discussing how useless she was. It really didn't matter. It couldn't. There were too many things that were more important just now.

Rose took a seat at the head of the table. The video feed showed one of the conference rooms in Cardiff and the four remaining members of staff from that office, all watching the camera. In the London office, every eye at the table was turned to her.

"Well, I suppose there's no beating around the bush," Rose began. "Torchwood is about to lose its government and military funding. We're effectively being shut down. Add to that the fact that you've suddenly been faced with me apparently being the director, not Pete, and I can see why I'm looking at just over a dozen people, and some of the maddest that I know- honestly, I'm surprised it's that many. I'll tell you this first: if you want to go, I fully support that move and you will receive your pensions and benefits until such time as you find new work. If you intend to go, please let me know now. You can tender an official resignation when you've the time, but I need to know what I have to move forward with."

Rose watched every face. No one spoke. She waited several minutes always expecting someone (or everyone, an insidious voice in her head, the one the sounded a bit like Cassandra O'Brien, whispered) to tell her to sod off and leave.

"We're not going anywhere, Director Tyler," said a voice from London. It was Mickey, looking at her earnestly and calling her by her stepfather's name as a show of respect.

Every voice, even those across the video feed murmured in agreement. The loyalty nearly brought tears to Rose's eyes.

"Okay then," Rose said, softly, willing her voice not to break. "In that case, we need to talk about the future of Torchwood. Trouble is that, without the government and military to protect us and back us up, we don't have the kind of freedom that we had before. We're going to have to go fully underground. We're going to lose Canary Wharf, but that's okay, I never much liked this place anyway." Rose gave a small smile, and she saw that smile reflected on nearly every face before her.

"Torchwood's job is to defend the Earth, and that's what we'll continue doing. We've gotten into a lot of bureaucracy in the past few years- spending more time dealing with tourists and pests than real threats because we had the resources to do it. I'm not sorry for what we've done and what we became, but we can't maintain it any longer. We're not going to become killers, and no one who comes to us for help or refuge will ever be turned away, but our main focus will have to move to defense. Is that understood?"

A murmur of agreement went through both rooms. These were not administrators, the administrators had been the first to leave. The bureaucrats had run like rats from a sinking ship. Anyone whose heart was not in the work had left leaving Rose with a hard core of scientists and adventurers. The thought made her smile again.

"If we're losing Canary Wharf, where are we going to go?" one of the scientists- Freeman, his name was, Arthur Freeman- spoke up from London.

"Cardiff," came a voice from over the intercom- Sarah Grant, a field agent on the rift. "We've got to watch the rift, and the Hub is, quite literally, underground. Also, we don't pay rent on it as it doesn't technically exist."

"Exactly," said Rose, smiling at the screen. "Sarah's right, the Rift is our first priority most of the time, so I want the bulk of the remaining staff to move there. However, London is still a magnet for trouble, and I had thought that we would keep some field agents in all of the major population centers of Great Britain. I want two in London, two in Glasgow, two in Dublin, and the rest based in Cardiff, but with the expectation that everyone can travel if necessary to get where they're needed. The entire scientific department will move to Cardiff." Rose looked around at all of the people sitting there with her. "I know asking most of you to move halfway across the country is a lot, but I also know that many of you are staying with me and with Torchwood because you believe in what we do, and you've given your lives to our duty. You don't have to decide immediately, and if someone has another idea, I'm open to anything."

Mickey spoke up then, "I trust Rose's opinions, and I trust that she has given this a lot of thought. She wouldn't ask us to up and leave if she wasn't sure, and I think that everyone here probably feels much the same way I do, am I correct?"

There was a general murmur of agreement.

Rose sighed. She didn't deserve this, but she was pleased to have it nevertheless. "All right then, this was what I was thinking." She flipped open a folder that she had brought it with her and glanced down her list. "Simplest first, I need all of my scientists at the facilities in Cardiff, so Dr. Freeman and Dr. Brown will be moving down there to assist Dr. Stewart and Dr. Turlough. Arthur and Dorothy, how soon do you think you can be ready to move?"

Arthur Freeman gave Rose a crooked smile. "Honestly, Director, I could probably be out of here by the end of the week, assuming my landlord doesn't want to have tea and discuss the madness in the papers."

Rose smiled back. "I know a landlady a bit like that, perhaps we should introduce them. You can take a long as a month, but sooner is always better. What about you, Dorothy?"

Dorothy Brown frowned slightly. "Should be possible, but I've two kids in school. I can't take them out until the holidays, you know?"

"Of course," Rose said, nodding and making a note beside Dorothy's name. "Make a list of what you'll need to work from home. Would you be willing to do a bit of traveling? Maybe one week in four in Cardiff? Also, we'll need to go through everything here in London, so you being here to help with that is a bit of a godsend."

Dorothy nodded. "I can probably do that. My husband's mum lives with us, so she can help out a bit while I'm gone."

"Fantastic," Rose said with a smile. "In addition Tosh has asked to be removed from active fieldwork and to return to the lab full time, which I have granted in light of the fact that she and Owen will be parents in the summer," Rose said with a sly glance at her friends, both of whom were glowing.

The entire staff let up a cheer. Even in difficult times, good news was good news.

"They will be moving down to Cardiff as well. Dr. Stewart, Dr. Harper will be sharing responsibility with you in the medical division, and Tosh will be joining R&D in Cardiff. Everyone," she continued, having thought of something, "particularly those of you already based in Cardiff, all of our team will need help finding flats and getting kids into school and all of that. Used to be we had a team of admins who could help, but we don't have that anymore, so we'll all have to help each other, yeah?"

Again, a murmur of agreement came down the line.

"Next up is a bit more difficult. As I said, I want people stationed in all four major cities in Great Britain. Alec Eccleston and Peter Tennant, you're both from Scotland originally, how would you like to go home?"

"Sounds brilliant," Alec said, nodding. "I've a brother in real estate up there, he can probably help us find flats."

"Yeah, my dad's got a big place outside Glasgow that we can probably stay in until flats are worked out too," Peter said. "He'll be thrilled that I'm coming home."

"Well that's easy, thank you both," Rose said with a smile at the two men. "Can I expect you both to be able to go by the end of the month or do you need longer?"

The two Scotsmen agreed that a month would be plenty of time for both of them.

"Ianto's grandmother is in Dublin, I was thinking that he and Jake could go there, if you two don't mind."

"Ianto can go almost immediately," Jake said, nodding, "but I'll need to stay and help you and Dorothy sort through the tech that is still here. Determine what needs to be destroyed and what needs to be sent down to Cardiff."

"Perfect," Rose said, with a smile. "That okay with you, Yan?"

"Oh yes," he said cheerfully. "Gran'll be glad to have me. Just send Jake along when you're done with him."

"Will do," Rose said with a smile. "Sarah Grant and Ian Heriot, I don't want either of you leaving Cardiff. Melody Wright," Rose turned to a woman at the table with her, "and Gwen Cooper, I'd like you two to go down to Cardiff. Gwen is going to head up the new Torchwood Prime team out of the Cardiff hub."

Everyone gasped. Even Gwen hadn't known this.

Rose smiled sadly. "Yeah, I'm giving up Prime. I know that team has been my baby for going on four years now, but I'm the director now, and I can't also be the head of Prime at the same time. But I'd only turn it over to the best, Gwen," she said, looking into the other woman's eyes. "And," she said, looking at all of the people she had assigned to the new team, "Prime has only ever taken the best. Keep that in mind." Rose waited a moment to allow her words to sink in. "Now," she continued, "that's not to say that I'm leaving the field to only do administrative work- most of you know I'd go completely spare if I tried." She grinned and got an answering chuckle from around the room. "Every person who is remaining with Torchwood will have to expect to do field work at some point unless they have medical leave not to, understood? We can't specialize like we used to because we just don't have the resources any more. We'll only pull you in if something big happens, yeah?"

Again, there was general agreement, if hesitation. Rose allowed it because many of these people had not signed on as field agents and running for your life for a living just didn't appeal to everyone.

"All right then. Obviously there's a lot to do, but I want everyone to go home now. Make a long weekend of this. Spend time with your kids, your mates, your partners, or just yourselves because there won't be time in the next few weeks.

"And there's one other thing that I want to say to you all. Thank you. I don't deserve your loyalty, but Torchwood does, because no matter what the papers say, we do good work. We are the defenders of the Earth, and I am so glad... so honoured to have all of you working by my side to do just that. Even if the Earth isn't very grateful, please know that I am."

As everyone started shuffling around to leave, a voice from over the video interrupted. "Ro- Director?"

"Please Ian, Rose is fine. I was as surprised to discover that I was the director as any of you, remember?"

"Okay, Rose. Have you heard anything new about the bastard who did it? The Tower and Pentonville and Torchwood and all? We don't get as much news down here as you all do in London, but they say he mentioned your boyfriend?"

"Ex-boyfriend."

"Oh," Ian said, awkwardly. "I didn't know."

"Suppose Mr. Holmes and I aren't nearly as interesting in Cardiff as we are in London, that's good to know."

"Well, what happened, why'd you break up?"

Rose sighed. She really didn't want to talk about this, but she couldn't cut herself off from these people, and he was asking out of legitimate curiosity and worry for her. "I'm the director of the biggest laughingstock in the People's Republic, Ian. He makes his living by being logical and reasonable. No one would trust him to solve their crimes if he didn't end things with me."

"He could have done it like less of an arsehole," Melody said with venom. She was a bit of a celebrity-follower. She loved tabloids and had followed the story carefully and talked about it with Rose on a few occasions that she could find to do so.

"Yes, the sidewalk outside his flat was hardly the best place to stage that argument, but some of the fault for that was mine as well. No need to piss through his letterbox or anything, it's not that important. Besides, he is working on James Moriarty's trial, and that's good for all of us, in the end. I just don't much want to talk about it, if that's all right with everyone."

"Sorry," Ian said, and he did sound it.

"It's fine," Rose said, sounding a bit sad. "Everyone go home now. Bright and early Monday, the hard work begins."

~?~?~?~?~

Rose walked home that night. Mickey had offered her a lift and even offered her dinner with him and Martha (he'd been doing that a lot since the breakup a week ago), but she wanted the air and the quiet of her own flat tonight.

Despite leaving the office barely after lunch, Rose's meandering walk back to her flat had her there as the shadows were lengthening and end-of-work traffic was beginning to pick up. She was glad to be home, away from newsstands and people who recognized her face.

When she reached the door of her flat, she pulled out her key and was just about to put it in the lock when she noticed something. A voice in the back of her head (which sounded annoyingly like Sherlock) told her to take a second, closer look. She knelt down to look at the nob of her door. The keyhole had a few small scratches around it. The kind of scratches made by a set of lock picks wielded by inexpert hands.

Rose had been plagued by calls, e-mails, and visitors- mostly the press- trying to get her to talk about Torchwood since the information had leaked and Sherlock since things had ended there. She had hoped that they might lay off her eventually, but if they were breaking into her flat, they were moving in the wrong direction.

Rose pulled out both her blaster and her key and entered her darkened flat.


	4. The Night Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lots of speculation about what is happening in this chapter. I do hope you enjoy.

The first thing that Rose noticed was that the door was still locked. The second was that her alarm was still armed. The third was the smell of tea that permeated the flat.

"There's only one person that I know that would pick the lock on my flat, then lock it behind himself and re-arm my alarm, and then make himself enough at home to make tea, but he doesn't usually leave scratches on the lock. Losing our touch, are we, Sherlock?"

"You sound like Mycroft," Sherlock said, appearing in the hall holding a mug of tea to find her blaster aimed at his heart as she shut the door behind herself. "I left those scratches there so that you would know someone was in your flat and not scream when you saw me, bringing the police down on our heads and requiring you to get a restraining order against me to maintain this pretense of ours."

Rose stowed her blaster and walked up to him, stealing the teacup from his hand to take a sip. "Ugh," she said, making a face at the bitter contents of his cup. "Lemon in your tea? Must you, Sherlock?"

"I've a cup made in the kitchen to your preference, you know. No need to steal mine."

"Thank you," she said, rising on her toes to kiss his cheek. "I needed that today."

"I know."

"No you don't," she said as she walked into the kitchen to pick up her mug of milky tea, then proceeded to the back of the flat to her bedroom to change.

Sherlock followed her and stood outside her room, continuing to talk through the closed door. "I did know, actually," he said. "I heard Mickey come back around 2 this afternoon, but it is now nearly 4 and you are just arriving, meaning that you either worked much later than he did, which is unlikely considering his level of commitment to both Torchwood and you, or you walked home. Through the park, I believe, considering the state of your shoes. You only do that when you need time to think."

"Very clever," she said, voice muffled through the door. "So how long have you been in my flat?"

"John isn't speaking to me since you and I made the paper. It makes my flat an uncomfortable place to be."

"Bollocks," Rose said, opening the door and emerging from her room in sweatpants and an oversized t-shirt. "You don't even notice when he leaves more than half the time. How on Earth would you know if he'd stopped speaking to you?"

"He gives me very pointed looks."

"You're rubbish at nonverbal communication," Rose said, brushing past him in the hall and returning to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator door to see if she had anything worth eating.

"He was fairly explicit when he told me how angry he was with me for ending things with you," Sherlock said, leaning on the wall just inside the kitchen and watching her discover that her refrigerator was effectively empty. "He was especially angry that I did it in such a public way that the paparazzi caught wind of it as it was happening. He was impressed that you slapped me, however."

"He hasn't tried to call since the day it happened."

"That's probably because you wouldn't answer his call when he tried. I think he assumes you're as angry with him as you are with me and want nothing to do with either one of us."

"Remind me why you haven't told him the truth?"

"John is not a terribly gifted liar. Why haven't you told Mickey?"

"More or less the same reason. Add to that the fact that I'm not presently speaking to either of my parents, but he is, and it's sure to come up in his conversations with them, I really want him to have to lie as little as possible. How is John handling the news that I'm the head of an alien-hunting organization?"

"He doesn't believe a word of it. He's convinced that everything that has come out about you was planted by Moriarty to get to me."

"He's such a dear. One of these days I'll have to tell him the truth about the universe, but I usually don't do that until they're faced with an actual alien. Makes things a bit easier." Rose shut the refrigerator. "I have nothing to eat, and I'm starved. I think it'll have to be pizza if you're planning on staying. It's the only thing I can order enough for two of and not look suspicious to whoever delivers it. Last thing I need is tomorrow's Sun telling everyone that I'm on the rebound with some mysterious someone who eats jasmine noodles and probably believes in little green men from Mars."

"Don't get pineapple on it," Sherlock said with a slight plea in his voice.

"My flat, my pizza, my toppings," Rose retorted, rooting around in her purse for her mobile.

"Fruit on pizza is an affront."

"So pick it off."

"It still tastes like pineapple after you pick it off."

"Tough, isn't it?"

Sherlock frowned at her as she dialed the number for delivery pizza. He smiled again, however, when she ordered her second favorite set of toppings- black olives and pepperoni- rather than pineapple. He crossed the room to her and, once she had clicked off the call and set her phone down, he cupped her cheek, drawing his thumb across the pink apple that was paler than usual. "Thank you," he murmured in a husky whisper.

"'Sjust pizza, no need to get like that," Rose said, moving away from Sherlock but he grabbed her wrist to keep her from leaving.

"Why are you doing that?"

"I'm not doing anything, Sherlock, please let me go."

"You won't look at me, you've avoided touching or being close to me since you arrived, you've been in constant motion, and you've been flip and dismissive, none of which is like you."

"I told you, you're rubbish at nonverbal communication. I'm not being any different than normal."

"Rose," he said, sharply enough to have her eyes finally meeting his. "If I am good at nothing else in this world, which is patently untrue, I am good at recognizing changes in human behaviours. Now. Tell. Me. What. Is. Wrong."

Rose looked up at him, close enough to kiss. His blue-gold-green eyes blazing at her, his hand gentle on her wrist, he was exactly what she needed just now. She had avoided this because she knew it would make him uncomfortable, but here he was angry with her because she had tried to spare him. Between his anger and his discomfort, she would select the second. Rose sighed, pulled her wrist from his grip, put her arms around his waist, buried her face in his chest and began to weep.

Sherlock was taken aback. He had expected yelling. He had thought she was angry with him and wanted to have a fight. He was prepared for that. What he was not prepared for was the bundle of warm, weeping girl that was currently attached to his chest. He had no idea what to do. A voice in his head (the one that sounded oddly like John) told him to hold her and apologize. Sherlock wrapped his arms around Rose awkwardly and whispered, "I'm sorry. Whatever I did, I'm sorry."

Even through her tears, Rose laughed. She leaned back to look at him, wiping her eyes a bit as she did. "Shut up, you daft man, you didn't do anything."

"Then why are you crying?" Just as Rose had expected, he looked completely terrified and wrong-footed.

"Because I need to, now just hold me and be quiet," she said, burying her face in his shirt again.

Sherlock did as instructed, and wrapped his arms around her shoulders again. He somehow felt that this wasn't enough, so he ventured a hand and stroked it down her hair. He felt her sigh against his chest and repeated the motion, hoping that it was a positive noise, but not wanting to ask.

After approximately 10 minutes (that felt like a small eternity to the bewildered detective) Rose gave a heavy sigh and stepped away from him. She moved over to the sink to get a paper towel and dried her eyes.

"Care to explain?" Sherlock asked, removing his jacket, the lapel of which was now soaked and hanging it on the back of one of the chairs at her breakfast table.

"S'pose so," she said, her voice slightly hoarse with her tears. "'Mgonna have some wine, you want some?"

"You should have a glass of water first or else you'll dehydrate and have a headache."

"Always go drinking with a chemist," she muttered, not unkindly, but pulled a large water glass down from her cabinet as well as two wine glasses. She held one of the glasses out and said, "That didn't answer my question you know, do you want some wine?"

"Yes," Sherlock said, "I suppose I do."

"Good," Rose said, waving her hand over to a selection of wine bottles in a counter-top rack on the other side of the kitchen. "Pick something and open it then while I have some water."

"What do you like?"

Rose, who was filling her glass at the sink, gave him a look as though he had dribbled on his shirt. He had not often had such a look directed at him. "It's my flat," she said, as though speaking to a five-year-old. "I don't keep wine that I don't like. Pick something from that rack that you like and I'll like it. Promise."

Sherlock nodded and chose a bottle. He turned to hold it up for her approval, but her back was to him, drinking deeply from her water glass. Sherlock looked around the kitchen, analyzing the drawer layout. He then extrapolated from that layout and what he knew of Rose (efficient, tidy, slightly whimsical) and selected a drawer. As he had suspected, the corkscrew lay within. He opened the wine and set it on the counter to breathe as Rose turned toward him again.

"Care to tell me why you just spent ten minutes crying into my lapel for no readily apparent reason?"

Rose sighed and boosted herself up to sit on the kitchen counter, feet dangling over the floor. She watched her feet as she began. "Torchwood is shutting down." She snuck a glance at him as though expecting a response to this statement, but he stood still and expressionless, listening to her like he did a client with a case. That was fine, in Rose's opinion. The less he interrupted, the easier it would be to explain. "First thing, my mum and Pete made me the director of Torchwood on paper without ever telling me. They did it as soon as I got stuck in this universe, so there's been six years that they could have found time to mention it, but they never did. So I'm furious with them, and not speaking to them, which is difficult because I do love them. I hate being so angry with them.

"Second, like I say, Torchwood is shutting down. Well, the public face is- Torchwood's mission to protect the Earth doesn't go away just because we get some bad press. We've lost government and military support so we're pretty much about to disappear off the map. We're moving to Cardiff to use the Hub there, which is a secret, and keep close to the Rift."

Sherlock felt his heart tighten at these words. She was leaving London? She was moving to Cardiff? This was how she was telling him? Over the past several months, Sherlock had grown accustomed to having her nearby. Like John, Rose was one of the few people that he could stand to have thinking near him when he needed to concentrate. Her presence, her goodness, her light helped to keep the horrible black depressions at bay. Just the thought of her being as far away as Cardiff caused his fingers to twitch in memory of a needle that he did not use any longer and his hands to shake in desire for a drug that he _did not want_.

Rose continued, not seeing Sherlock's distress. "So Prime is moving down to Cardiff, but I still need people in the major population centers, so I'm sending my best friends all over the damn country- Ianto and Jake are moving to Ireland. Tosh, Owen and Gwen are going down to Cardiff. I'm giving up leading the Prime team because Mickey and I need to stay in London. I'm giving it to Gwen. She'll be completely brilliant, but Prime was mine. When I lost the Doctor, it became my reason, my tribute to him, and now I'm giving it up. Add that to that the fact that I'm sending most of my best friends away, I'm not speaking to John or my parents just now, and you and I have to sneak around so that no one knows we're still seeing each other. I guess I'm a bit stressed, and I reckon that I deserve a good cry."

Sherlock's hands stilled with her statement that she would be remaining in London. He found that he could breathe again. He wondered what he should say to her- nothing came immediately to mind. He tried to think of what John would say in this situation and an idea came to him. "I'm sorry," he said, seriously.

Rose smiled as though he had said something funny and he would have asked what so amused her when a knock sounded on the door.

Rose dropped off the counter and could see Sherlock's instinct to answer the door in her place. "Stay here," she said quietly, reaching into her purse for her wallet. "Stay here, don't move. Don't let your shadow fall anywhere, and don't say anything, no matter what you hear, all right?"

"What do you-"

"Sherlock, I'm serious, please just agree with me." She looked at him with those wide golden eyes and, as ever, he could deny her nothing.

"Fine. I'll stay quiet."

"Thank you," she said and brushed her lips over his in a whisper-soft kiss.

Sherlock listened to her walk to the door and open it. He heard a young man with accents betraying his formative years on the north side of London say, "one medium pepperoni and black olive pizza." Sherlock then heard the young man take a deep, gasping breath. "You're-you're-you're..."

"The pizza's mine, would you be willing to hand it over?" Rose asked

"You're the alien lady!" Sherlock rolled his eyes at this.

"Sure, why not?" Rose responded. "Now, may I have my pizza?"

"But that's so cool! I've always thought that the government was keeping things from us. Stonehenge and alien abductions in America, and all sorts of craziness, and the government always knew and never said anything because it would send people into a panic..."

"Look, I've got your money right here, would you mind giving me my pizza and going away?"

"Hey, I know how hard it must be for you. All those idiots who think they understand about what you do. Hey, do you want my number? You know, in case you ever want to talk about it? Or you could give me yours? We could get coffee or something? I totally believe in aliens and everything, and you just broke up with your boyfriend, right?"

Sherlock's right hand curled into a fist but otherwise, as he promised, he remained still.

"I don't give my number to strangers, thanks, now please give me my pizza."

"Well my name is Barney. Barney Fielding, so now we're not strangers anymore, right Rose Tyler?"

Sherlock breathed slowly through his nose to calm himself and not rush out to beat the stupid child to a pulp.

"No, we are definitely still strangers. Now I'm very hungry, so please just give me my pizza."

"Well I get off in a couple of hours. I could come back. We could talk?"

"If you come back to my flat, I will call the police and tell them that you're stalking me. Sound all right? Now, give me my pizza before I'm forced to call both the police and your boss and tell both of them that you're harassing me."

"Fine, bitch. I hope it makes you fat and gives you spots you... bitch."

"Yes, very clever. Here's your money. Tip's on top." She closed the door in his face and locked it behind her. She listened to be sure that he walked away before bringing the box into the kitchen where Sherlock stood looking quite murderous.

"And that's why I told you to stay still, no matter what you heard."

"This happens regularly, does it?" Sherlock was reasonably proud of how steady his voice was. He was working very hard to keep the as-yet unidentified reactions that the young man had elicited at bay until he could examine them and determine what, exactly, they meant.

"Pretty consistently since the leak, yeah," Rose said, offhandedly, as she fetched plates and forks. "Half of the world thinks that I'm mad, wasting government money on fairy tales, the other half loves a good conspiracy or watches a bit too much X-Files." She stacked the dinnerware on top of the pizza box and handed it to Sherlock. She then grabbed the bottle of wine and both glasses and led the way into her sitting room.

Sherlock followed her and set his burden on the coffee table where she indicated. "He did not just ask you about aliens. He asked for your number."

"Yeah, that sometimes happens. More often with believers than non-believers, but what can you do?"

"You don't…" Sherlock stopped himself. His voice had come out a bit higher than he'd intended and that wouldn't do. This was an inquiry. A fact-finding mission. There was nothing unusual about it and his voice would not give lie to that fact. "You don't give them your number, do you?" Ah, much better. His voice sounded much more normal now.

Rose smiled, slightly. "Blokes only get my number if they're my type," she said, turning her sparkling eyes to him.

"And what, Rose Tyler," Sherlock smiled at the sharp intake of breath at her name, "is your type?"

"Too clever to be delivering pizzas," she said with a flash of white teeth and a peek of pink tongue.

"That all? You and Mycroft should go to dinner sometime. He's probably the cleverest man in London."

"That's a disgusting thought," Rose said. "I think that face over the dinner table would sour the digestion." She leaned forward and flipped the lid off the pizza box, selected a slice for herself and placed it on her plate.

"That is usually my excuse for avoiding family dinners," Sherlock agreed. He took the wine bottle and poured into both glasses, offering one to Rose and keeping the other for himself. "Then that can't be all the criteria to get your number, cleverness, else you'd be willing to consider Mycroft. What else then?" Sherlock tried to keep it as playful banter, but he found himself genuinely curious.

"Hmmm," Rose intoned, taking a contemplative sip of wine and a nibble of pizza. "He'd have to be ready for adventure, the bloke who gets my number. Not just ready in case it finds him, but he has to want to go and find it himself. Jeopardy friendly, as it were. Ready and able to run for his life. Willing to believe the impossible." She took another bite of pizza, swallowed, and continued. "But, most importantly, he's got to be good, this bloke. Not necessarily a good man- the kind who doesn't need rules because he naturally does what's right- but a man who has a daily struggle with the darkness in himself, his mistakes, his guilt, his losses. A man who chooses to work toward the light, when the darkness is so much easier and sometimes so much more appealing. A man who would choose to destroy his home planet to save the universe, or kill himself and the woman he loves to save a planet. A man who understands that there aren't two sides to the world- the angels and the devils- but who knows that it's so much more complicated than that. A man who can make the right decision, even when it is the decision that would disgust most people." Her golden-bright eyes found Sherlock's and held them for a breathless moment. "That's the kind of man who gets my number, Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock could barely form words. He wanted to shout at her that he was not that man, that she had him entirely wrong, but she saw people so much better than he did. If anyone could look at a man like him and see that, and have it be the truth, it was she. He wanted to grab her, pull her into his lap and kiss her breathless. What he did was say "I see."

Rose smiled. Sherlock Holmes rendered speechless? Pity John wasn't here to see it, but she'd never have said what she'd said in front of him. She wanted to bring Sherlock back from the edge, however, so she said, "Well, he's also got to be good looking, you know? Good in the kitchen. Tidy." She grinned at the man across from her who was as messy as any man she'd ever known, and a menace in the kitchen. "What about you, Sherlock Holmes? What does a girl have to be to get your number?"

"Fishing for compliments, Rose Tyler?" he asked, the screaming tension in his head breaking. He was pathetically grateful to her for that.

"Always," she said with a grin.

"Well, I'll have to agree with you on a few counts: intelligence is key, as is a desire for a certain lifestyle- high adrenaline, high danger, with a tendency to, as you say, run for your life. She'd have to like violin music." Sherlock ignored Rose's eye-roll and continued. "She would have to be willing to put up with black depressions and general impatience and the fact that I do not discuss emotions or even, always, feel them. A girl who got my number would be forced to accept that I would either never call or text, or text far too often, but only because I needed something. She would have to deal with the fact that I get death threats on a regular basis and keep pieces of cadavers in the refrigerator. She would also have to understand that I am not a good man, nor do I have a good history. I am constantly on the precipice of falling into madness and addiction again and without the strength of character of those around me, those who matter the most, I will fall and may never make my way back out again. To do all of that, she would have to be kind, compassionate, and patient to a fault, but with a layer of steel to put up with the worst of me." Sherlock looked at Rose and there was no hint of a smile in her lips or eyes. He could see that she understood what he was offering her with these words, but now he wanted her smile again. "The girl who could get my number would also have to refrain from eating fruit on her pizza, crying into my lapels, or complaining that I drink tea with lemon."

That brought Rose's smile out, and Sherlock found that he couldn't help smiling back.

A sneering voice (Mycroft's voice) was in the back of his mind. _Goldfish. Besotted fool. Attached. Involved. Losing objectivity_.

Another voice broke in. John's voice. _She makes you better_. John had told him that when the story of their breakup had hit the papers. John had told him to call her up and find a way to get her back. Grovel if he had to. " _She makes you better_ ," he had cried. " _You're going to throw away the best thing in your life because of what some journalist says? Since when do you care what anyone says about you?_ " Sherlock would never admit it out loud or even allow the thought at the front of his mind, but somewhere, around the area of his heart, he knew that John was right.

Another voice, insidious and sly- the voice of James Moriarty- spoke now. _I will burn the heart out of you_. Rose had taken up residence beside his heart. In associating with her he had allowed that organ to walk outside his chest even more starkly than he had done when he befriended John. The fear washed through him in a sudden, impossible wave.

"Sherlock?" Rose asked.

Sherlock's eyes snapped back into focus. He had slipped into his mind palace without warning. Rose had moved close to him, her hand a centimetre from his face, a crease between her brows.

Sherlock was galvanized. Some madness gripped him. He knew that he might be dangerous to her, but he was far too selfish to give her up. He took the hand that hovered over his cheek and pulled so that she tumbled into his lap and then he was kissing her. He was kissing her as he had never kissed anyone before in his life- all open mouthed with nipping teeth and seeking tongue. He sought to lift his darkness with her light. To silence his madness with her goodness. To quell his fear with her hope.

Rose made a surprised, squeaking sort of a noise when his mouth descended on hers and for a moment, Sherlock expected her to reject him. Push him away. Then her mouth opened under his, her arms slipped around him, and one of her hands tangled in his hair, and he was lost again. He drowned out his demons with the rush of blood in his ears and the sound of her ragged breathing, and his. One of his hands skated under her t-shirt, over the warm, silken skin of her back, the other tangled in the golden sweetness of her hair and she let out a mewling sound that sent Moriarty, Mycroft and John all running for cover.

A new voice spoke, however. Gruff, authoritative, the voice of Lestrade spoke of the consequences of moving forward without thinking. Another voice, protective and loving, that of Mickey Smith reminded him that Rose was not to be hurt.

Sherlock eased back from the kiss. He could not yet bring himself to move his hands off of her, but he could step back- try to keep her safe.

Sherlock opened his eyes (when had he closed them?) and looked at the girl cradled in his arms. Her eyes blinked slowly open showing him that her pupils were blown wide. Her cheeks were flushed bright pink and her lips were swollen pink and glossy. His hand in the middle of her back registered her heart rate was above normal, and her breaths came as though she had been running. He felt a surge of absurd pride at the sight of her disheveled and aroused in his arms.

Rose took a deep breath. "Right," she said, looking up at Sherlock. "Not that I mind or anything, but was there any… _particular_ reason for that?"

Sherlock allowed a small smile. "There was, yes, but it seems to have slipped my mind."

Rose straightened, and moved out of his grasp, even as he was reluctant to let her go. "You're lying," she said, softly, "but I'll let it slide for now. Shouldn't go any farther though… probably not wise."

Sherlock nodded. He agreed, though he was loath to release her. He did, however, because he knew that if she remained him his lap, his instinct and desire would overcome his good sense and logic.

Rose extracted herself from him fully and got off the couch. She took the pizza box and plates into the kitchen. Sherlock heard the refrigerator door and water running, but she returned in less than five minutes to sit on the sofa next to him but not touching.

"I was going to watch a movie tonight, just to relax," she said, not looking at him. "It'd be pretty dull for you, so you can go if you want. It was good to see you."

Something, some small inflection in her voice made Sherlock think that this was not the dismissal that her words made it sound like. The way she wouldn't look at him told him that she wanted him to stay, but expected that he would go.

"Could I stay?"

Rose looked up at him in surprise. "Well yeah, of course, you can stay as long as you like so long as no one sees you leave. It'll be really boring for you though."

"My father used to say that boredom is character-building."

"Really?" Rose asked in disbelief.

"Yes, really. Why is that surprising?"

"Dunno, just seems like such a normal dad-thing to say. I sort of expected the father of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes to have something more… _pithy_ to say about it."

"My father is a man of average intelligence. Really, the man is average in every way."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously."

"And your mum?"

"My father calls her a genius, and technically she is, but she's nowhere _near_ on Mycroft's and my level."

"That's… kind of surprising. Guess I sort of expected all of the Holmes family to be similar types of idiot-savant."

"Idiot?" Sherlock asked, sounding offended.

"Oh yeah, you and Mycroft both. All of the genius that gets poured into your observational skills, your logical processes and your memory, when it comes to people you're both completely hopeless. But I suppose it would require someone with the kind of basic human compassion that comes with being _ordinary_ to not kill both you and Mycroft before you reached adulthood."

"It does take someone fairly extraordinary to put up with either of us," Sherlock said, stroking a hand down her arm. He wondered if it was clear that he was _not_ talking about his father.

"I'd enjoy meeting them, someday, your mum and dad."

"I wouldn't," Sherlock said, remembering his first meeting with Jackie Tyler, as well as the very few subsequent ones (he did try to avoid her invitations to tea- this was one of the very few benefits of this new arrangement with Rose), and imagining his mother meeting Rose. "Besides, they can't meet you if you and I are not an item. How long is that supposed to last, precisely?"

"Dunno," she said, sounding dejected. "I guess until the papers stop finding me interesting enough to follow everywhere, thus minimizing how much of a liability I am to you."

Sherlock looked at her, the light in her eyes dim, and John's voice seemed to guide him again. "For now," he said, placing his fingers under her chin to raise her eyes to his, "there are no papers. For tonight, let's watch a movie together and pretend that we're ordinary."

"Pretend that we don't chase aliens and serial killers for a living respectively?" she asked, her eyes lighting again.

"Precisely. Nothing based on Jane Austen though," he qualified as she got up to look through her movies.

Twenty minutes later they were watching Disney's _Aladdin_. Sherlock was laid out on his back on the sofa and Rose was curled into his side, head pillowed on his shoulder, one hand over his heart. Twenty minutes after that, Sherlock felt Rose twitch her way into sleep. He could have moved away. Could have carried her to her bedroom. Could have gone back to his own flat and his own bed. He did not, however. He remained where he was, moving only to shut off the television when the movie ended. He stroked her hair as she slept and, eventually, he too drifted off.

* * *

**I'll be honest, I feel a bit like one of those cartoon characters who drops a bomb and walks of whistling.**

**So... yeah. There's that.**

**Love reviews, as you probably know!**


	5. The Morning After

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All of my readers and Kudo-ers (we're going to pretend that's a word for now) and reviewers are absolute stars.
> 
> I do hope you enjoy this chapter.

Rose's eyes popped open. She was quite certain that she had been awoken by something other than the natural end of her body's sleep cycle, but she could not immediately identify what it was. Her soldier's instincts kicked in first, and she observed her surroundings. 

She was not in her bedroom, so she must have fallen asleep on the couch (she hated doing that, she thought nonsensically, it always left her back sore the next day). Rather than the nubby fabric of her sofa, however, her cheek rested on something smooth, warm, and moving. She could hear a steady rhythm under her ear and realized that she had fallen asleep with her head on someone's chest. 

Sherlock! 

The events of the previous evening finally reached her sleep-addled mind and Rose sat up suddenly, jostling her bed-mate enough to nearly send him off the side of the sofa. She was about to apologize when what had awoken her repeated itself. 

A knock on the door, then Mickey's voice muffled by the wood, but clear enough. “Rose? If you don't open up, I'm going to use my key to come in there myself. Come on, babe, I want to talk to you.” 

“Oh bollocks,” Rose muttered, looking down at Sherlock, still lying half under her on the sofa. “Well, I suppose this is as good a time as any other to tell him we're not actually broken up.” 

“I could get out without him seeing me,” Sherlock said with his customary arrogance. 

“Sure you could, but it doesn't matter. May as well tell him as he'll figure it out eventually. He knows me too well for me to lie to him for long.” Rose climbed over him to stand in front of the couch. 

Sherlock struggled to move his stiff limbs. The arm that Rose had slept on was asleep and he was really too tall to be completely comfortable on her couch. He finally made it upright as Rose crossed the sitting room. 

“Would you mind putting on the kettle?” Rose asked. “This conversation will probably require tea.” 

Sherlock nodded and retreated into her kitchen. Rose crossed to the door and opened it to find Mickey standing on the other side, a worried expression on his face. 

“Did I wake you?” he asked by way of a greeting. 

“Yeah, you did,” she said with slight irritation in her voice. 

Mickey glanced at his watch. “It's almost 9:30, this is late for you, babe.” 

“Fantastic, brilliant, molto bene. It's Saturday, I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to sleep in without bringing down the troops,” Rose groused. She knew she was being irascible, but she hadn't had any tea yet, so she was not completely at fault. 

Mickey seemed to agree with this. “Let's get some tea into you before we continue this conversation,” he said, taking her arm and leading her into the kitchen. 

“Wait!” Rose cried, stopping Mickey outside of the door to the kitchen. “There's something I need to tell you before you go in there... see, me and Sherlock-” 

“Aren't actually broken up,” Mickey said, matter-of-factly. “Of course I know that. Why? Is he in there?” 

“Yeah, he is,” Rose said. She was, somehow, not surprised that Mickey had figured it out without her telling him. He'd always known her better than anyone. 

“You don't look like you got laid last night,” Mickey said, looking her over. 

“I didn't,” she responded, simply. 

“But he's at your flat at 9:30 AM making tea when you've only just woken up?” 

“Do I pry into your personal life?” 

“Regularly,” Mickey said with a grin. 

Rose gave him an answering grin. “It's a bit like the Doctor, really, and I don't want to talk about it just now, okay?” 

“I can hear you,” Sherlock bit off from the kitchen. “This flat is not so large as all that.” 

Rose led Mickey into the kitchen, the two of them giggling like children. Sherlock gave them a stern look like a schoolmaster, which just served to send the two old friends into further waves of laughter. Sherlock turned away from them, disgusted, to finish making the tea. 

“So, Mick,” Rose asked, once she and Mickey had settled down, “have you heard from my mum and dad yet?” 

“Your mum called me shrieking last night,” Mickey said, rolling his eyes. “Said I had to come over straight away and make you talk to her and Pete. When I told her I wouldn't, she said she would come over herself. You owe me for stopping her. She'd have broken down your door and caught you two doing... whatever it is you were doing last night.” 

Rose rolled her eyes, but Mickey noticed that the tips of Sherlock's ears and the back of his neck had both gone bright red. 

“Did you come over to tell me to call my mother, Mick?” Rose asked, one eyebrow raised. “Because if so, you can go right home. I'm not even going to bother giving you tea. You know why I'm not speaking to her or Pete just now.” 

“No, I didn't come over to tell you to call Jackie. If I thought you ought to talk to her, I'd have let her come over last night.” 

“Fine, so why did you come over.” 

“Wanted to talk to you about Moriarty, actually, so it's lucky Sherlock's here.” 

“Speaking of which,” Rose said as Sherlock placed tea in front of her and Mickey and sat down, “how did you know we weren't broken up? Even John believes it.” 

“John hasn't known you as long as I have, Babe,” Mickey said with a grin. “You might be acting okay if _you_ had broken up with _him_ , but when you get dumped, you turn into a right terror you do.” 

“Oh shut up, you only ever saw me get dumped once,” Rose said with a glare that she didn't mean. She’d been impossible after Jimmy had ended things, but one time did not a pattern make. 

“Remember after Himself in the pinstripes jumped through the mirror in France?” 

“Shut up, Mickey,” Rose said, blushing. She did not much like to think of the fact that she had gone into the TARDIS and shattered a few things in her room during the five and a half hours she and Mickey had waited for the Doctor to return that day. Apparently Mickey had noticed, even if the Doctor hadn’t 

“Anyway, I also thought about it, and I thought 'Rose has been dealing with the paparazzi so long that she knows better than to have a fight like that in public.' Then yesterday, when you told everyone that no one would ever hire this one,” Mickey thrust a thumb in Sherlock's direction, “if he kept dating you, it all clicked into place. Not to mention finding him in your kitchen first thing in the morning says a lot.” 

“Brilliant deduction. You're a right Sherlock Holmes, you are,” Rose said with a teasing smile. 

Sherlock snorted over his tea. 

“Anyway, you said you came here to talk about Moriarty,” Rose continued, ignoring Sherlock. “What about him?” 

“Well, Jake and I have been looking at the files, and thus far we haven't found anything that he actually _took_. Just like at the Tower and the Bank, he just opened the doors. Didn't steal anything.” 

“Well yeah,” Rose said with a frown, “because he got caught, right?” Rose glanced between Sherlock and Mickey. She noted a change in Sherlock's expression. “What's that face for?” she asked him. 

“What face? I'm not making a face,” Sherlock said with a frown. 

“You are, actually,” Mickey said. 

“Well it's my face, I can't exactly see it.” 

“It's the face you make when you know something that you're not telling,” Rose said, studying him. “So go on, spill, what's brought it on?” 

“Well, it's obvious, isn't it? We all know what he's up to.” 

Rose sighed. As much as Sherlock had changed and warmed when he was behind closed doors and it was just the two of them, in this element- solving crimes and showing off- he was the same man as ever. “No, Sherlock,” she sighed. “ _We_ ,” she indicated herself and Mickey, “don't know. So please feel free to enlighten us.” 

“James Moriarty is a genius. He's as clever as I am, possibly more so.” Both Mickey and Rose looked at him in shock at this admission, but Sherlock was beyond caring. “Were I to plan a break-in to steal the Crown Jewels...” he continued. 

“You do that often?” Mickey interrupted. 

“Only as a mental exercise,” Sherlock answered, distractedly. 

“Oh, naturally,” Mickey muttered, rolling his eyes at Rose who grinned. 

“No part of my plan would involve having every door locked and sealed behind me, cornering me in the display room. Moriarty wasn't caught, he was put on display, and it was entirely part of his plan.” 

“What plan?” Rose asked, with concern. 

Sherlock did not look at her as he lied. “I do not know yet. I presume that more will come to light during his trial.” 

If Rose gave him a long, searching look, as though into his soul, before nodding, Sherlock ignored it. 


	6. Who's Afraid?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry if you comment and I don't answer as quickly as I should. My life is really crazy right now, and I'm not able to answer reviews consistently until Wednesday. I still love you, and I still love reviews!

He settled into a comfortable position, stretching his legs out in front of him. He wondered if it would be too much to link his hands behind his head, or if he should keep them crossed across his chest. Ah well, no one could accuse him of subtlety. Not anymore. He became a caricature of lazy disrespect as the guards came to the door to allow his barrister into the room.

The man was an idiot. He was earnest and efficient and ordinary and dull.

"Did you bring the newspapers?"

The barrister looked affronted that this was the first thing out of his mouth but produced the stack. He kept track. The whole weeks' worth, as requested. He liked to keep up on his press clippings.

"I don't know why you want all of these. They don't have anything that could help you with the trial. I don't understand-"

"That is obvious," he said, sounding like Sherlock for a moment. He shook it off. "Decoupage," he said, simply.

"What?"

"I've taken up decoupage in my free time here in prison."

His barrister looked at him, open-mouthed. God, the man might as well be a trained pigeon for all the good he would do.

He opened one of the newspapers, perusing the pages for the stories he sought. On page three he found a photograph of Rose Tyler looking downcast.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

The story was about the vote being made among the president's cabinet to close down funding for Torchwood. The military had already withdrawn everything and the article seemed to think that Torchwood was done for.

He thought that, perhaps, Rose Tyler was clever enough to keep it running without the help.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

"They're bringing Sherlock Holmes in as an expert witness," his barrister said.

Oh? Now that was interesting.

"I may be able to stop them bringing him on."

"No."

"What?"

"You will not stop them bringing Sherlock on as an expert witness."

"Okay, then tell me something I can use against him. How long have you two known each other?"

"We've only met twice, probably a total of five minutes." He smiled, remembering the meetings. The one at the swimming pool had been so... intimate. Sherlock's past... _no one_ knew it like he did.

"But that's wonderful. That will throw his entire testimony into question!"

"Maybe, but you won't do that. You're going to let him talk and not say a word."

"What about our own witnesses?

"No witnesses."

"What evidence are we giving for a plea of not guilty?"

"None."

"No evidence? No witnesses? It's like you want to be found guilty!"

He smiled. "Now you're getting it."

The barrister was getting angry at this point. "So what is the point of standing trial if you just want to spend the rest of your life in prison?"

"Prove a point, I suppose." He gathered the papers into a stack to carry back to his cell with him. "Lovely to see you again. Same time next week? Don't forget the papers. My craft project will suffer if you do."

The guards escorted him out, papers in hand, leaving behind his barrister who watched him go as though he were mad.

Returning to his cell meant returning to his papers. Three papers in he found a photo montage on the front page of Sherlock and Rose yelling at each other and a lovely action shot of her slapping him.

Lucky bitch.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

Irene had gotten to slap him, but she got off on that sort of thing.

Looked like Sherlock's fairy tale was over. Pity that, it would have been such fun to capture his queen. The plans were still in place to blow his house down, however.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

Just a few more weeks. The rest of the plan was in place, and it would just be a few more weeks. Then Sherlock would burn.


	7. The Trial

"And remember..."

"Yes." Sherlock did not need reminding. He had a perfect memory and John was interrupting more important thoughts.

"Remember..."

"Yes." Sherlock wanted John to be quiet. He was sure that Rose would chastise him for being rude, but Rose had been in Cardiff for two weeks and tension at her absence was making him prickly.

"Remember what they told you, don't try to be clever-"

"Yes." Would John never cease?

"And, please, just try to keep is simple and brief."

"I'm confident that the star witness of the trial should come across as intelligent." And he would.

"Intelligent, yes. Let's give smartass a wide berth."

"I'll just be myself."

"Are you listening to me?"

Sherlock ignored John's implication. Rose would be at the trial today. Two weeks since he had seen her and she would be there. She had left a coded message on John's blog.

_Username: 3Roses_

_This is coming from a home-bound lady from north of Cardiff who's looking for information on Moriarty. It's a trial to never see articles with you and him around here._

John had showed it to him, and laughed about the elderly using the internet. He didn't think the note made much sense, but to Sherlock it was obvious. The username was the key: three represented which words to read (every third) and the mention of Roses referred, obviously, to her. _Coming home from Cardiff for Moriarty trial see you around_. Sherlock felt an odd swooping sensation in the range of his stomach every time he thought that she would be there.

He also felt a wave of fear when he considered the fact that she and James Moriarty would be in the same room. Nothing good could come of Rose Tyler having any closer an association with Moriarty than being two humans inhabiting the same planet, and he was not fully comfortable even with that level of intimacy between them.

Sherlock forcibly turned his mind from thoughts of Rose Tyler to thoughts of the coming trial and his role therein.

~?~?~?~?~

Rose and Mickey stood looking at the Old Bailey and the crowd of reporters standing outside, broadcasting.

"Remind me why we're doing this, again."

"Torchwood was a victim, victims get represented at the trial, we represent Torchwood, so we're at the trial," Rose said in a colourless tone.

"You mean we're not here as Sherlock Holmes' girlfriend and her moral support?"

"Sherlock Holmes' _ex_ -girlfriend and her moral support, maybe," Rose said, mindful of the possibility of listening cameras. "Think John's probably here as his girlfriend."

Mickey took her hand and squeezed. Rose sighed, smoothed down her brown skirt and red top and moved forward to face the music. She hadn't seen Sherlock in two weeks. She did hope he'd gotten her message, but there hadn't been anything that she could identify as a response, so she couldn't be sure.

"Rose Tyler!" A voice cried out as they began to ascend the steps of the Old Bailey. Rose and Mickey both stopped and turned. A woman, just a bit younger than Rose was chasing after them, hampered slightly by her heels.

"Sorry," Rose said to the young woman. "Torchwood has made their statements, I'm not speaking to the press today." Rose and Mickey turned away to continue into the courthouse.

"I don't want to talk to you about Torchwood." The woman continued to follow them to the top of the steps where Rose turned again to face her. She was dressed conservatively, a knee-length skirt, blouse and cardigan with a large, inexpensive purse, but she was belied by her hair- done into two plaits over her ears- and her shoes- too high to be sensible. Rose knew that if Sherlock were here, he would say something about the fact that she was trying to look younger than she was, and sexier than she should. Rose did not give voice to these thoughts, but she tucked them away in her mind.

"Not Torchwood?" Rose asked, keeping her tone mild and polite. "I can't think of anything else that would interest the papers about me. Perhaps you're thinking of someone else."

"No, it's definitely you that I want," the girl said, giving Rose a friendly smile that was not returned. "Kitty Riley," she said, offering a hand to Rose, who shook it only briefly. "I'm looking for the inside scoop on Sherlock Holmes. The man under the hat, as it were, and I think that you-"

"I'm gonna stop you right there," Rose interrupted. "I'm not going to talk to you about Sherlock. I will say one thing to you, Kitty Riley. Not to your paper, to you. Avoid Sherlock Holmes, Kitty, because he will chew you up and spit you out. I assume that this is the last I'll be seeing of you, yes?" With that, Rose and Mickey left Kitty standing outside the courthouse.

~?~?~?~?~

Kitty was mildly disappointed, but Rose Tyler had only been plan A. She dug through her bag for the pieces necessary for plan B. She was looking forward to this one.

~?~?~?~?~

Sherlock was washing his hands in the restroom before the trial when he caught sight of a woman in the mirror behind him. His first thought was Rose, but that was quickly set aside as his observations caught up with his hopes. This woman was slightly taller, less fit, darker-haired, and less well-dressed. She stared at him in wide-eyed amazement and dropped her bag.

"You're him."

"Wrong toilet," he muttered, throwing away his paper towel and assessing her reflection. He noted the deerstalker-style hat and the button with his name on it.

"I'm a big fan," she said, taking a step toward him, her voice full of sexual promise.

"I'll bet you are," he muttered.`

"I read your cases, follow them all." Sherlock turned to face her and she took another step closer to him, invading his personal space. "Sign my shirt, would you?" she offered, unzipping her cardigan to display a blue blouse that was unbuttoned much further than propriety allowed. She moved in again, this time very nearly leaning into his chest, and held up a pen.

"There are two types of fans," he said allowing nothing to colour his voice but disinterest.

"Oh?"

"'Catch me before I kill again.' Type A."

"Uh, huh." She had not moved back from him. "What's Type B?"

"Your bedroom's just a taxi ride away," Sherlock answered, not allowing the slight disgust he felt to colour his tone at all.

"Mmmm, guess which one I am?"

Sherlock took her in from head to foot again. "Neither."

"Really?"

"No, you're not a fan at all. Those marks on your forearm, edge of a desk. You've been typing in a hurry probably, pressure on, facing a deadline." He met her eyes with his. He had seen people shrivel under a pointed stare from him. This woman was either braver or stupider than most. Sherlock knew which he would cast his vote for.

"That all?" she asked.

"There's a smudge of ink on your wrist and the bulge in your left jacket pocket." He had taken her wrist up and turned it to display the smudge and he nodded toward her digital voice recorder that he could see in her pocket.

"Bit of a giveaway," she said with a smile.

"The smudge is deliberate. It's to see if I'm as good as they say I am." He lifted her wrist and breathed deep. His clever nose sifted through the inexpensive floral lotion that she wore and picked up the smell of newsprint. "Oil based, used in newspaper print. Drawn on with an index finger, your finger." She gave a little laugh, and Sherlock said, "journalist," like another man might say 'dog vomit.' "Unlikely you get your hands dirty at the press. You put that there to test me."

"Wow, I'm liking you," she said. The false sexuality was still there, but it was now layered with real attraction and appreciation.

"You mean I'd make a great feature: 'Sherlock Holmes: The Man Beneath the Hat.'" Some of Sherlock's disgust with the press could now be heard in his voice. The girl did not seem to notice.

"Kitty," she said, removing her hat, "Riley. Pleased to meet you." She offered a hand to shake.

"No," Sherlock said, voice quiet and dangerous. "I'm just saving you the trouble of asking. No, I won't give you an interview. No, I don't want the money." Sherlock made to leave the washroom, but the girl followed him.

"You and John Watson, just platonic? Or should I put you down for a 'no' there as well? Spoke to Rose Tyler. She's got nothing nice to say about you, do you know?" She grabbed the door from his hand and shut it before he could get out. "There's all sorts of gossip in the press about you," she said, in his space again, sensual promise mixing with more mercenary concerns. "Sooner or later, you're gonna need someone on your side. Someone to set the record straight." She pulled a card from her pocket and tucked it into the pocket of his jacket.

Sherlock smiled a cold smile that did not reach his eyes. The thought that this _creature_ had spoken to Rose and questioned John's honour had his temper boiling. "You think you're the girl for that job, do you?" he asked, managing to keep the white fury out of his voice.

"I'm smart," she said with pride. "And you can trust me totally."

"Smart?" Sherlock asked. "Okay, investigative journalist, good. Well, look at me and tell me what you see." He leaned away from her, giving her a moment to take him in. It was all the time that he would have required, but he waited another few moments as she stared at him in disbelief. "If you're that skillful, you don't need an interview," he said, taking a step away from her. "You can just read what you need." He gave her another second, but still she said nothing. "No? Okay, my turn." He took another step back and ran his eyes from her toes up to the top of her head. "I look at you and I see someone who's still waiting for their first big scoop so that their editor will notice them. You're wearing an expensive skirt that has been re-hemmed twice. The only posh skirt you've got. And your nails, you can't afford to do them that often. I see someone who's hungry. I don't see smart, and I definitely don't see trustworthy." Sherlock's temper was flooding over into his words now, his need to protect his friends. "But I'll give you a quote if you like. Three little words." He reached into her jacket pocket and removed her recording device, clicked it on and held it to his mouth as he said, "You. Repel. Me." He dropped the device back into her pocket and walked out of the washroom leaving a stunned Kitty Riley behind him.

Sherlock was arrested outside of the door of the washroom by the sight of Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith standing at the other side of the courthouse lobby talking to John. As though she sensed him, Rose looked up, making brief eye-contact with him. She gave him the smallest of smiles, then schooled her face back to coolness. She nudged Mickey and brought his attention and John's to Sherlock. Once everyone had seen him, Rose pulled Mickey off toward the viewing gallery of the courtroom with a brief word to John.

Sherlock crossed over to where John now stood alone. "What is she doing here?" he asked, as though he did not know.

"She's representing Torchwood as one of the victims. She's talking to me again, which is a good sign. You should talk to her too and apologize," John said, giving Sherlock a meaningful look.

"Torchwood got shut down," Sherlock continued, ignoring John completely.

"Yeah, she told me that. She's been in Cardiff looking for a job. She might move away, Sherlock." John gave Sherlock a very intense look. Sherlock continued to pretend not to understand what John was on about.

"She is the Vitex heiress, she doesn't need to work if she doesn't want to."

"You're a complete arse, you know that?" John asked, temper getting the better of him. "I always told you that she was the best of you, and you were the best you've ever been when you two were together."

John was right, of course, and Sherlock well knew it- though he would never admit it. Rose reminded him to see the people involved in a case rather than to overlook them. With that additional piece, pictures came together even faster than was usual for him. He could not admit that to John here, however. Not with ears like Kitty Riley's about.

"I don't need some woman to make me better, John. Now, if you don't mind, I need to concentrate on the trial."

John shook his head. "I'm going to go get a seat then. Good luck being the _star witness_." John stalked off in a flurry of anger.

Sherlock knew why he hadn't told John the truth, but he was beginning to regret the decision to a certain extent. Life was much easier for him when his flatmate did not consider him the biggest bastard in Great Britain.

~?~?~?~?~

He watched the viewing gallery fill. There were only a few faces that would fill that area that he was interested in seeing. When one of them entered, golden hair pulled back sleekly, red silky top that matched her red-painted mouth, he smiled.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

His smile was a slimy, evil thing. It crept over his face like a slug. It did not flash and sparkle or bring light. It did not make a person wish to respond in kind. It was nauseating. Vile. Repulsive.

She looked at him. Everyone did when they came in- the difference was that she mattered and they did not. She ran her eyes over him, and he might have felt flattered (she'd shared Sherlock's bed, after all) if her lip had not been curled in disgust. She met his dark- nearly black- eyes with her brilliant gold ones. For a moment, as their eyes met, she was transformed in his mind to the creature from his dreams- a woman of golden light and terrible power.

_The Big Bad Wolf. TheBigBadWolf._ _**Who'safraidoftheBigBadWolf?** _

He looked away from her. He couldn't help it. The song in his head was louder than it had been in months. When he chanced a glance up again, she was being helped into a seat by the tall black man who had been walking with her. He hadn't noticed the boy because he didn't matter. Only she mattered.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

He watched John come in and seat himself next to Rose Tyler. They talked together quietly. She smiled at him. Touched both of the men she was there with. Not the sort of woman he could see Sherlock with. Irene, now there was a woman who suited him. She was icy, like he was. Intelligent. Hard as a diamond. Disingenuous. Perfect.

Rose Tyler was warm, golden fire.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

Sherlock entered, but he sat with the barristers- not a witness, a participant. He smiled at Sherlock, and then flicked his eyes up to Rose Tyler. She was watching Sherlock with narrowed eyes and Sherlock was actively avoiding looking at her. Her eyes found him again and he licked his lips at her.

She shuddered.

He smiled.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

~?~?~?~?~

"A consulting criminal?"

Sherlock had not been at the stand very long. James Moriarty's first smile was not quite dead on his face. John's hand was still on Rose's shoulder to brace her for seeing Sherlock like this. Sherlock's heart was still warmed from the very brief moment of eye-contact that he'd shared with her.

"Yes." John had said to keep the responses brief.

"Your words," the barrister said, clearly hoping that he would clarify. When he did not do so immediately, she continued. "Can you expand on that answer?"

"James Moriarty is for hire." Wasn't that obvious from the term 'consulting criminal'? He kept himself from saying that out loud because John had warned him and Rose was watching.

"A tradesman?"

"Yes," Sherlock said, dangerously, meeting Moriarty's eyes.

"But not the sort who'd fix your heating." The barrister was going for a joke. Sherlock could do a joke.

"No, the sort to plant a bomb or stage an assassination, but I'm sure he'd make a pretty decent job of your boiler."

The jury and those in the viewing gallery actually responded to the joke. Moriarty gave him an over-blown look of shock as his joke hit. Sherlock allowed his eyes to flick to the gallery where John, Rose and Mickey were sitting. All three were smiling. Good.

"Would you describe him as..."

"Leading," Sherlock interrupted. He could see John's smile turn into a scowl in an instant.

"What?"

"Can't do that, you're leading the witness," Sherlock continued- he was too far in to stop now. "He'll object and the judge will uphold," he finished, nodding to Moriarty's barrister.

"Mr. Holmes," the judge said in an exasperated voice.

"Ask me _how_ would I describe him, what opinion have I formed of him. Don't they teach you this?" Sherlock saw Rose's mouth form the word _rude_. John covered his face with his hand.

"Mr. Holmes, we're fine without your help." The judge sounded exhausted by him.

"How would you describe this man, his character?" the barrister conceded.

"First mistake, James Moriarty isn't a man at all. He's a spider. A spider at the center of a web. A criminal web with a thousand threads and he knows precisely how each and every single one of them dances." Sherlock held eye-contact with Moriarty through his description, and the man looked... pleased.

In the viewing gallery, Rose leaned toward John. "The two of them should probably get a room."

The barrister cleared her throat uncomfortably. "And how long..."

"No, no. Don't- don't do that." Sherlock was actually serious about this. The honest answer to this question would not sound good to his side of the argument. "That's really not a good question."

"Mr. Holmes!" the judge cried, quellingly.

"How long have I known him?" Sherlock asked the barrister. "Not really your best line of inquiry," he added as an aside. "We met twice, five minute in total. I pulled a gun, he tried to blow me up. I felt we had a special something." He was impatient with this. He knew nothing good could come of this admission.

Moriarty made a face as though he were pleased and surprised that Sherlock had called them 'special.'

"Ms. Sorrel," Sherlock had forgotten the barrister's real name, but the judge reminded him, "are you seriously claiming this man is an expert after knowing the accused for just five minutes?"

"Two minutes would have made me an expert, five was ample," Sherlock cut in quickly. He was actually trying to salvage the situation, but he could see from the looks on John and Rose's faces that he was doing a poor job of it.

"Mr. Holmes, that is a matter for the jury!" The judge was quite indignant.

"Oh really?"

John closed his eyes, knowing what would come next. Rose cringed and hid her face in Mickey's shoulder.

Sherlock looked over the members of the jury with a practiced eye. "One librarian, two teachers, two high-pressure jobs, probably the city. Foreman's a medical secretary trained abroad, judging by her shorthand..."

"Mr. Holmes," the judge tried to interrupt.

Sherlock continued without acknowledging the judge. "Seven are married and two are having an affair with each other, it would seem. Oh, and they've just had tea and biscuits. Would you like to know who ate the wafer?"

"Mr. Holmes!" The judge was properly angry now. "You've been called here to answer Ms. Sorrel's questions, not to give us a display of your intellectual prowess! Keep your answers brief and to the point. Anything else will be treated as contempt! Do you think you could survive for just a few minutes without _showing off_?"

Sherlock glanced at the viewing gallery where both Rose and John were looking at him with pleading expressions on their faces. He met Moriarty's eyes and saw a pleased, cruel smile widen his mouth.

Sherlock took a deep breath, opened his mouth and said, "Yes, of course, Your Honor. My apologies. I will do better."

The rest of his testimony went off without incident. Sherlock was bolstered by the small, proud smile that played around the edges of Rose's lips. Were he a less controlled man, he might have smiled right back at her.

~?~?~?~?~

"I did say not to get clever," John said exasperatedly as they left that evening.

"I can't just turn it on and off like a tap," Sherlock muttered. Rose had left without saying anything to him. "Well?" he asked John.

"Well what?"

"You were there for the whole thing," Sherlock said. "I know what I saw, so what did you see?"

"It's like you said it would be. Sat on his backside, never even stirred. Moriarty looked at Rose a lot though. That was… unsettling."

The previous evening the two men had discussed what Sherlock was expecting from the trial. Sherlock had suggested that Moriarty might not bother launching a defense. What defense could there possibly be? Even his mistakes on the witness stand could hardly hide the fact that the man had been caught sitting in the display case of the Crown Jewels.

"Yes," Sherlock agreed. "Moriarty isn't mounting a defense." He did not like to think of the implications of Moriarty taking an interest in Rose.

As the two men continued down the road, Sherlock noted that he had a notification on his phone. His blog (rather than John's) had received a comment. It happened on occasion- people who read scientific information on the internet, or those who fancied themselves consulting detectives as well. Sometimes even people who were misdirected looking for John's blog.

_Username:35234FlowersfFromHeaven2335_

_I had not heard that this was going on back when I started to hear about the trial. Now, tomorrow I'll have your brilliance and flat abs in my mind instead._

Sherlock's clever mind took the numbers and he could see the proper words highlighted. _Not going back to trial tomorrow your flat instead_. Flowers meant Rose. He would have to warn her to come inconspicuously, but would she understand if he did? He'd have to try.

As John flagged down a cab, Sherlock began to type into his phone.

_Username: LockedDownDetective3_

_Nothing will come of this. In my experience through the courts, back room deals please most people._

Every third word, a fairly simple code. _Come in through back please_. He hoped she understood.

Sherlock and John spent the cab ride in silence. Sherlock was contemplating having Rose in his empty flat tomorrow. The thought pleased him more than the trial did.

As they walked into the apartment, John spoke again.

"The Tower, Pentonville, Torchwood and the Bank of England. Four of the most secure places in the country, and six weeks ago, Moriarty breaks in. No one knows how or why. All we know is..."

"He ended up in custody," Sherlock interrupted.

"Don't do that," John said.

"Do what?" Sherlock asked.

"The look."

Sherlock felt an odd sense of deja vu. Hadn't he been through this once before? "The look?"

"You're doing the look again."

"I can't see it, can I?" Sherlock was sure that he'd been here before. Why was John asking the same questions again?

John nodded toward the mirror over the fireplace and Sherlock turned to examine his own face. "It's my face?"

"Yes, and it's doing a thing. You're doing your 'we both know what's really going on here' face."

"Well we do!" Sherlock was sure he'd been through this with John.

"No, I don't, which is why I find _the face_ so annoying."

Sherlock now remembered that it had been Rose and Mickey that he'd had this conversation with, not John. Now he'd have to go through it all again.

"I thought I'd gone through this with you," Sherlock said, by way of apology. "I must not have actually said it out loud. That sometimes happens. If Moriarty had wanted the jewels, he'd have them. If he wanted those prisoners freed, they'd be out on the streets. The only reason he's still in a prison cell right now is because he chose to be there. Somehow this is a part of his scheme."

John looked mollified at Sherlock's almost-apology, but suspicious as well. "What's got into you, Sherlock?"

"Beg pardon?"

"You're not acting like yourself. You're actually acting... sort of human."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

Suddenly John's eyes opened wide as though he'd had an epiphany. "It's Rose. Seeing Rose today. That's why you didn't get yourself kicked out of the courtroom. That's why you just almost apologized to me. It's seeing Rose."

"Rose Tyler has no influence over me any longer. She and I are not involved."

"Oh my god!" John rose from his chair and stood before Sherlock. "You two didn't actually break up, did you? That whole thing in the paper was planted."

"John, I'd really appreciate it if you would not shout. Mrs. Hudson is probably in her flat, and has no interest in hearing your absurd theories."

John gave a half-smile, correctly interpreting Sherlock's desire to keep the farce of his breakup from their landlady and lowered his voice, but he did not stop speaking. "You two did it on purpose, didn't you?"

"Yes, John, we did it on purpose, now shut up about it," Sherlock snapped in an irritated whisper.

"Well why didn't you tell me?"

"Because, aside from Mrs. Hudson, you are the worst liar I know. What if the press had come to ask you about it?"

"I'd have said 'no comment,'" John answered, sounding offended.

"And if it had been Lestrade, or Mrs. Hudson, or Mycroft who had asked?"

"I'd... I'd have..."

"And that is why I did not tell you."

"Did Rose tell Mickey?"

"He deduced it himself before she could. Now, could we please return to the topic at hand? I will not be returning to the courthouse tomorrow, but I would like you to do so, if you would. You will be my eyes on the scene. More time in Moriarty's presence and I may find myself fall ill."

"Fine," John said, diverted from discussion of Sherlock and Rose. "Defense should speak tomorrow, right?"

"If they are going to mount a defense, which they aren't."

"Should be a short day."

~?~?~?~?~

Sitting in his cell that night, he reviewed the day. He'd gotten to see Sherlock again, which was lovely, but the face that played behind his closed eyelids was brown-eyed and topped with blonde hair.

Rose Tyler.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

Maybe he could find a way to have her. He'd done it before. That was why he'd had Molly- the girl who loved Sherlock, even if it was unrequited. Now he could have the girl who'd _had_ Sherlock.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

Tomorrow would be the verdict. He was confident. He was ready.

He would huff and he would puff and Sherlock's comfortable world would come crashing down.

_The Big Bad Wolf._


	8. The Verdict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **This chapter has a lot of slightly weird references in it. There are references to the works of Robert Burns (specifically the poem To A Mouse), and the plot of Don Quixote (greatly simplified). If you have any questions, PM me or look the works up, if you like. I'm a fan of both Burns and Cervantes, so I'll probably tell you more than you ever cared to know!**
> 
> **Many thanks to WhoLockGal for Sherlock's poetry preferences!**

Rose arrived in the mews behind 221 Baker Street. She glanced at the back of the building and tried to decide the best way to enter. The brick-work was too even for climbing, and there were no convenient trellis or vines. She did not want to enter through Mrs. Hudson's flat- she somehow thought that would be an unwise idea, even if she knew that the woman were out, which she did not. She tried to puzzle out the answer, frowning at the back of the building.

She turned on the spot and noticed a workman's ladder leaning against the side of the building opposite. It was dingy, as though it had been sitting out in the elements for at least a week. Rose thought that it wouldn't be noticed were it moved for a few hours, and she happily commandeered it.

Rose turned the picture of Sherlock's flat around in her mind. There were two windows that were options at the back of the flat. One was the kitchen. She did not really want to come in there, in case Sherlock were entertaining someone in the sitting room (Mrs. Hudson or John sprang immediately to mind), it was too visible. She was trying to remember what room the other window went to. John's room was up a floor, so it must be Sherlock's bedroom. She could only hope that he wasn't asleep in there as he was likely to pull a gun on a strange person entering through his window.

She leaned the ladder against 221, under the window to Sherlock's room and climbed. Once she got to the window, she looked in. She'd been right, and it was the detective's unoccupied room. Trying the window, she found it latched, which made her smile. Latching a second-story window was so very _Sherlock_ , but she supposed it didn't count as paranoia if people really _were_ out to get you. From her pocket she dug a tool that Sherlock had spent a few days teaching her how to use. She wished for a sonic screwdriver, but knew that it was a waste of a wish, so she'd bullied Sherlock into teaching her to get through a lock the human way. Now she rarely went anywhere without a set of basic lockpicks. The window gave way to her ministrations and Rose felt a pride that she thought she wouldn't have felt in using a sonic device. Grinning to herself, she climbed in the window silently, and then shut it before she moved farther into the room.

Rose moved quietly. She did not want to be shot as a thief, skulking through Sherlock Holmes' flat, and she also wanted to see if she had the skills to sneak up on the famous detective. She was pitting her real skills against a legend- one she'd heard of all her life. She very nearly giggled at the brilliance of the whole thing even as her hand twitched, wishing for someone's to hold.

Rose made it across the room (really only a few steps) without allowing the floorboards to creak too obviously. She opened the door and found that, to her relief, it did not squeak. She crept down the hall, through the kitchen and into the sitting room and found Sherlock sitting, staring into the middle distance.

Damn.

He was in his mind palace, which meant that she could probably have come traipsing in with a passel of elephants and his mother singing opera and he would not have stirred.

She took a book off his shelf- Robert Burns- and settled into John's chair to read. He would come back when he came back, and she would be here when he did.

_...But Mousie, thou art no thy lane,_  
In proving foresight may be vain:  
The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men  
Gang aft agley,  
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,  
For promis'd joy! 

_Still thou are blest, compared wi' me!_  
The present only toucheth thee:  
But och! I backward cast my e'e,  
On prospects drear!  
An' forward, tho' I canna see,  
I guess an' fear! 

She was murmuring the words out loud- hearing them helped her understand the Scottish when she wasn't certain what was meant- when she heard Sherlock finally shift.

"How long have you been here?"

Rose glanced up with a smile. "About twenty minutes. How on earth don't you get robbed once a week, Sherlock?"

"Had it been someone I did not trust, I would have noticed them. Also, burglars rarely sit quietly and read Robert Burns in the house that they are burgling."

"It was either the Burns or the Dunlop," Rose said with a sly smile and a brief glance at him through her lashes. As she had hoped, Sherlock blushed slightly. Rose had noticed the battered copy of _Have You Snuzzled a Wuzzle Today_ on his shelf when she had chosen the Burns. She'd had a copy in her bedroom on the Powell Estates- gone now- and there was one on the TARDIS-blue bookshelf that Mickey had built for Tony's bedroom. It was, somehow, entirely endearing that Sherlock had a copy on his shelf that was, from the apparent age and the amount of wear, a childhood favorite. "I wasn't sure how long you'd be out, and the Burns takes longer to read." She closed the book and rose to return it to the shelf.

Sherlock watched her. She remained at the bookcase, looking at the titles. His bookshelf had never been a place that he kept items for entertainment value. Until very recently there had been no fiction (save for the Dunlop that she had noted, and it had been hidden in the back). Shortly after meeting her, however, he had purchased the Dickens that she had just brushed her fingertips over. Sometime after Cardiff, she had mentioned Burns as one of her Doctor friend's favorites and he had found a copy to peruse. He'd been dismissive of the sentimentality of the poetry, but he could appreciate the mechanics. At the Vitex party, she had referred to Mycroft by a name that she said came from the Harry Potter series. He had intended to skim the books to try to understand the reference, but had found himself caught up in the story. Those books he had hidden in the bottom of his wardrobe like contraband and had not mentioned them to John or Rose.

"So," Rose began, turning from the shelf to face him again, "have you solved it?"

"Solved what?"

"Whatever was going on in that genius brain of yours."

"I was thinking about Jim Moriarty."

"Naturally. You said that he wasn't caught because he was careless; he was caught because it was part of his plan. Now he's not mounting a defense. Care to explain?"

Rose resumed John's seat, folding her legs up to sit tailor-style, facing Sherlock straight on, awaiting his explanation. It was not Sherlock's habit to review the theoretical side of an investigation with anyone save John, and he usually preferred the skull as it didn't interrupt. He'd never done this sort of thing with Rose. Usually he was able to impress her by pulling the correct answer ostensibly out of thin air, proving to her that he was brilliant. Somehow the thought of her seeing the (sometimes excruciating) process worried him. She had, occasionally, mentioned how her Doctor would pounce on a solution as though from nowhere. He had always tried to do the same around her. Not that he was trying to prove anything. Sherlock knew precisely how brilliant he was and had no need to compete with the absent alien.

"Let me see if I can do it." Rose interrupted his thoughts. "So he broke into the Tower of London, Pentonville Prison, the Bank of England, and Torchwood. Four impossibly secure places with things inside of them that are either valuable, dangerous or both. Except for Torchwood, all of them are relatively well-known…"

"Wait!" Sherlock cried. She had found something that he had missed. He, of course, knew about Torchwood, but most people did not. "Of course. Tower of London- that's obvious. British landmark. People all over the world know about the Tower and what it holds. Crown Jewels." Sherlock jumped out of his chair and began pacing, the nervousness at Rose seeing this part of the process completely forgotten in his mania. "Bank of England- also obvious. It's a bank, a huge bank, and it houses money. One of the biggest banks in the world, and one of the most secure. It's another one that anyone could understand. Pentonville. That may not be a household name outside of England, but he opened all of the doors of a prison. Anyone could get out, so nothing is safe. He didn't take anything because he didn't need to- all he had to do was prove that he could- prove that he had the key. But why Torchwood?"

Rose watched him. For a moment his light eyes and dark hair were both sort of brown to her eyes. The dressing gown billowing behind him became a long brown trenchcoat from Janis Joplin. His clipped, public school accent slipped to the South of London in her ears. She shook her head to clear the hallucination, but one thing remained- his hands. The Doctor's hands had been volatile, emotive, and restless. Sherlock's hands were the same- flying through the air, touching items as he passed, fingers spreading, compacting, and spreading again. When he thrust his hands into his hair and tugged, the familiarity of the gesture filled Rose's eyes with tears.

Sherlock turned to her. "Your team was checking files to see if he'd taken anything. Did you find anything?"

Rose blinked in surprise, not realizing that her active participation would be expected or desired.

Sherlock, impatient with even a moment's delay snapped his long fingers in front of her face. "Answer me!"

This behavior galvanized Rose, but not in the manner Sherlock had hoped. "Oi," she cried, jewel-bright eyes narrowing. "Rude!"

"I don't care, I require data!"

"And I require a moment to gather my thoughts, Sherlock Holmes!" Rose stood from the chair and stepped over to Sherlock. She stood in his personal space, menacing him despite the fact that he towered over her. "Is this how you normally question witnesses, Sherlock? Because if so, I don't know how you ever manage to get _anyone_ to talk to you. Now, _sit_ down, _calm_ down, and let me get a word in edgewise." Rose's voice rose with each word until she was very nearly shouting.

Sherlock's eyes widened in shock as her fury broke over him. Yes, this _was_ normally how he dealt with witnesses, but usually they were so intimidated by him that they caved to his behavior. He should know by now that Rose Tyler never caved. He dropped into his chair, reeling.

Rose took a deep, slow breath to bring her scattered thoughts back into order. "We'd actually stopped looking for…" Rose broke off. Both she and Sherlock turned toward the staircase from which the sound of climbing feet was emanating.

"Sherlock? What's going on? I heard shouting!"

"Damn," both Rose and Sherlock muttered together upon recognizing the voice of Mrs. Hudson.

"Do you need me to hide?" Rose asked Sherlock.

"Too late," he answered as the sitting room door opened.

"Sherlock, I don't know what you're thinking shouting up here but… Rose?" Mrs. Hudson came in talking, but upon seeing Rose standing over Sherlock she stuttered to an uncomprehending halt.

"Hello Martha," Rose said with a tired smile.

"Are you two having another row?" Mrs. Hudson cried in despair. She turned to Sherlock. "Haven't you done enough? You ruined one of the best things you ever had by breaking up with Rose. You were so much happier when she was around, Sherlock. Must you make it worse?"

"Mrs. Hudson, Rose and I…" Sherlock began but was immediately cut off.

"And Rose, how did you get in without my hearing you? Goodness, I hope I'm not losing my hearing. I've so missed our teas, dear."

"Yes, Mrs. Hudson I have as well but…" Rose was also cut off.

"Oh, are you two reconciling? Because that would be wonderful, wouldn't it? Sherlock, you must apologize for what you said to Rose, it just wasn't decent. You earned that slap of hers, but if you two could…"

"Mrs. Hudson!" Sherlock and Rose cried together, stopping her mid-stream.

"What is it?" She asked in shock.

"Could you possibly see your way clear to shutting up?" Sherlock asked angrily.

"Don't be rude, Sherlock," Rose said, tiredly. She turned to his landlady then to speak. "Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock and I are not broken up, that was an, apparently, ill-advised ruse. But we're currently working on a case, so you're welcome to stay if you like-"

"No she isn't," Sherlock interrupted.

"But you must remain quiet while we work through it," Rose continued, completely ignoring him.

"She can't," Sherlock commented.

"Shut up, Sherlock," Rose said, not bothering to look at him.

"Oh, I'm so pleased that you two are back together," Mrs. Hudson effused, clapping her hands. "You must come have tea with me, Rose! I can make those little cakes you like so much!"

Sherlock leaped to his feet to begin ushering Mrs. Hudson out the door. "If Rose is going to have tea with you, you'll have to go to the market to get what you need make those cakes. You probably need biscuits too."

"Now Sherlock, it's rude to go through my cabinets," Mrs. Hudson said as he continued to shepherd her to the door.

"I haven't been through your cabinets, but it has been a few days since you went to the market, so surely you're overdue." Sherlock was speaking through clenched teeth, trying to get Mrs. Hudson out the door and not allowing his anger to spill over onto her- an act that would infuriate Rose.

"I suppose you're right, dear. I probably ought to pick up… You like bananas, right, Rose?"

"Yes, Mrs. Hudson," Rose said, beseechingly. "But I really don't think I'm going to be able to come to tea today, you see. Sherlock and I have a case..." Rose could see that Mrs. Hudson wasn't listening- she continued to talk until Sherlock shut his door at her back and slid the privacy latch into place.

Sherlock turned back to her. "Please, could you tell me whether Mickey and Jake ever encountered a file that Moriarty did, actually, copy?"

Rose half-laughed. He was trying to meet her requirements, but his impatience shone through. Rose could acknowledge that he was trying, however, and answered. "They've stopped looking, actually. They looked at the most dangerous things but nothing had been touched so we stopped wasting their time. Everything else was pretty innocuous, and things were getting out of hand- moving down to Cardiff and the trial and everything."

"He took something," Sherlock said with certainty. "I know he did. He didn't break into Torchwood by accident, and it's the move that doesn't fit. Find it and we know what he's after."

"All right," Rose said, pulling her ubiquitous notebook and pen from one of the pockets in her cargo-style trousers to take the information down. "Anything else?"

"You'll let me know as soon as you find out?"

"Naturally."

"There's something in this," Sherlock said, pacing away from her and looking frustrated again. "Something that I'm missing. Something in Torchwood. What does Torchwood have- what information?"

Rose shrugged. "All sorts. Alien weapons. Plans on how to build a Cyberman. Viruses and poisons that could wipe out a major population center in a matter of minutes. Technology that would drastically change the course of human development. About what you'd expect from a shadowy government organization tasked with dealing with aliens." Rose tried but failed to keep the note of bitterness out of her voice.

Sherlock, however, did not notice. "Surveillance equipment?"

"Yeah, some. And some other items that could be turned to surveillance."

"Other intelligence-gathering?"

"Sure."

"What about..."

"Sherlock!" Rose cried, losing her patience. "Just assume that if it can be imagined, Torchwood has a file on it, or something similar enough as makes no difference. It may not be something we ever focused on, but if we heard about it from a visitor, we put it in a file. If Moriarty wanted something to destroy the world, he could get it from Torchwood."

"He doesn't want to destroy the world," Sherlock said quietly. "He's many things, including completely mad, but he's not self-destructive."

"No?" Rose asked, surprised. "Then why isn't he mounting a defense?"

Sherlock frowned at her. He didn't want to say that he didn't know, but the truth was that he didn't know. He was saved from this admission by both of their phones going off simultaneously.

Rose glanced at the display screen and moved into the kitchen to answer Mickey's call. "What's up, Mick?" she asked, knowing that he would have texted if it were something simple.

"The verdict was not guilty, Rose. He mounted no defense, called no witnesses, entered no evidence. The judge insisted that they find him guilty, and they didn't."

"You can't honestly tell me that you're surprised."

Mickey sighed over the phone. She was, as always, right. He wasn't surprised, he just wished he knew how it had been done, and he said so.

"Circumventing the law and justice is what he does, Mick."

"Maybe," he said, distractedly. "There's more though, Rose. I got a call from Cardiff- the stars are going out."

"What?" Rose asked. She felt an odd sensation in the back of her mind- a tingling but also an uncomfortable sense of _deja vu_.

"There's a whole empty section of space that had stars, planets and creatures in it before, and it's spreading."

"Where does it originate?"

"The Medusa Cascade," Mickey answered quickly.

Rose frowned, trying to remember. "But there's nothing inhabited in that region, is there? Who could be putting out the stars?"

"Rose, this is bigger than some Sontaran or Zygon plot. This is huge. They're not exploding stars, or destroying them. The stars are winking out of existence entirely."

"My God," Rose breathed as the magnitude of what she was being told washed over her. "That's... impossible."

"And if Rose Tyler says it's impossible, I think we may need the Doctor."

"We need to get back to Cardiff, Mickey. Tonight. This isn't something that you and I can decide together," Rose said, tensely. She didn't like to think about what this could mean, and what initiating a search for the Doctor would do to her. It would be she who went, she knew. He would trust no other, and she would not allow another to run dangers in her place. Rose shoved these useless thoughts behind a door in her mind and locked them down.

"Are you at your flat?" Mickey asked.

"No, but I can be there in ten minutes. Do you have a bag packed? I could get it for you."

"Sort of, I haven't actually unpacked, we've only been in town for two days. I'll need to organize it though."

"Same here. We'll take your car to Cardiff. We'll leave in an hour, yeah?"

"Fine. See you then."

Rose rang off and turned toward the door where Sherlock was standing, having listened to the end of her conversation with Mickey.

"How much did you hear?"

"You're returning to Cardiff." The statement had no emotional weight behind it whatsoever.

 _Sherlock's mind was racing. As John had told him, Moriarty would most assuredly come for him. He remembered the threat from a year ago:_ I will burn the heart out of you _. He had allowed himself to forget the danger. The last time Moriarty had pursued him, he had strapped a bomb to John's chest. Sherlock had been forced to choose between John's life and pursuing a murderer, and had chosen John. How much more quickly would he now choose Rose? She represented a great vulnerability in him- his heart outside of himself- much as John did._

"Yeah," she said, keeping a similar lack of emotion in her own voice. "Got to get back to defending the Earth, you know. Leave London to you for a time."

"You weren't intending to stay in London only two days, so something must have come up."

_It would be wiser, simpler, and safer for both of them to separate. To cut off the finger to save the hand. Sherlock's head was clear: he must end his involvement with Rose Tyler for the safety of both of them. His heart, however- that strange organ to which he had been listening more and more since the spring night when she had entered his life- cried out that to do so would be to remove his head to save his feet, or to remove his heart to save his liver. Sherlock had always considered the heart an inferior instrument through which to experience the world. The lens was warped, he had always thought. Then he had met John and Rose, both of whom led with their hearts and, though they were not better detectives, they were better people by far- wiser, kinder and braver- than he. Perhaps what he had always believed was a warp was a magnification instead. It showed those things that were true, but not logical._

"Brilliant deduction, detective," Rose said, a slight acidity marring the perfect tonelessness of her voice. She wished she could read his mind. "I take it that John told you that Moriarty is back on the streets?"

"He did, yes."

_He could tell her. He could warn her that Moriarty would come for her. He should. It would help keep her safe, but if he did… If he told her, he would have to tell her why. Tell her that, were Moriarty to wish to cut his heart from his chest, all he would have to do is touch Rose Tyler. He could not admit it. Could not tell her. Better to keep her in the dark. Cardiff was far enough away, and he would watch Moriarty from here. The knight to guard the queen from capture. If he was lucky, Moriarty had believed the pap and would think that she was nothing to him any longer. He was rarely so lucky._

"So how did he do it? Get off without mounting a defense?" Rose had hoped for something. Maybe some indication that he wanted her to stay (though she couldn't). She'd hoped, at least, for a kiss goodbye- not this emotionless, heartless recitation of facts, almost as though he were looking through her. Talking to his skull instead of her.

Suddenly, Sherlock was back in his eyes. "I don't know, but I will determine, have no fear. But you must leave. The way you came, through the lumber room and down the ladder- move it back to the other side of the mews, if you please."

Rose was taken aback. His voice was still quick and clipped, but it sounded more like fear and nerves now than dismissal. "Right," she said, wrong-footed. "Of course. I'll have to text John and let him know that we can't get dinner this week… I'd told him that we would."

"I'll tell him."

"So he knows about… You and me?"

"Yes." Sherlock was now pulling her toward his bedroom door.

"Sherlock!" Rose cried. "What is wrong with you?"

He looked at her then. Really looked. He feared he would not see her again for some time- he would catch Moriarty and have him either dead or behind bars before he allowed her to return to London for any significant length of time. "You must go to Cardiff," he said, keeping his eyes trained on hers. "It is safer there than in London with Moriarty free. If you wish to communicate, continue to use the comments section of John's blog. I'll tell him to show me any unusual comments that come in."

"So we're maintaining the pretense? I figured that, with John and Mrs. Hudson knowing…"

Sherlock shook his head. "We have to keep it up. Once I explain, John will be the soul of discretion, and I will find a way to keep Mrs. Hudson quiet." He might have to enlist Mycroft. No, strike that, he was _certain_ to have to enlist Mycroft. If he was to be sure that Moriarty did not leave London, it would require the power that Sherlock's brother commanded.

"You'll be all right, yeah?" she asked, bringing a hand up to his cheek and frowning in confusion at his strange reactions.

Sherlock mirrored her action and cupped her cheek. "I will be fine," he promised softly. "Once you are in Cardiff and I needn't worry about your safety, I will turn my entire attention to bringing James Moriarty to justice."

Rose nodded. "Okay. But you'll keep yourself safe, yeah?"

"You've nothing to fear."

"Good," she said with another nod. She reached for the door handle, but found her wrist stopped by Sherlock's long-fingered hand.

"Rose," Sherlock began, and his voice was slightly hoarse. "I will miss you."

She smiled, trying to ease him. Something was going on here that she did not fully comprehend, but Sherlock was afraid, and she wanted to soothe. "You won't, you know. You'll be so busy trying to catch a madman that you won't even know I'm gone. And you'll have John if you need back-up. So you see? Won't notice a thing."

"You're probably right," he said with a smile. He did not agree with her because it was true, but because it once had been, and had it been anyone but her, it would still have been.

"You keep London safe then, Sherlock."

"And you keep the Earth safe, Rose."

With that goodbye, Rose ducked into the bedroom. Sherlock stood for a moment and watched the spot where she had disappeared, segmenting the emotions, thoughts, ideas and memories that always came out with Rose's presence and pushing them behind a heavy door with a solid lock in his mind palace. It was time for his mind, not his heart to rule.

Suddenly, the door in front of him opened, and Rose was there again. Without warning or preamble, she slid her hands to the back of his neck, and pulled him into a searing, sparkling kiss. It was a kiss that spoke of the dangers that both would be running. The uncertainty of their return- either of them. The memory of the Doctor and the presence of Moriarty. It was a kiss to tide them both over until they were together again- however long it was.

One of Rose's hands was tangled in Sherlock's hair, the other was on his chest, and she pushed him so that his back was against the wall, pressing herself into him. Sherlock- taken, at first, by surprise- wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her up to her toes so she could better reach his mouth and cupped the other hand under her bum to help support her weight.

She was blazing hot. _Like kissing a star_. The fanciful thought flitted through his mind like a dust mote in the sun. She tasted of peppermint and bergamot and waxy lip gloss, while he was oversweet coffee and burned toast and orange marmalade. She smelled of lemongrass body wash and her preferred orange blossom and jasmine perfume, he was dust and chemicals and his own spicy sandalwood soap. She was all softness and sweetness where he was hard, sharp and just a bit prickly.

After several long minutes or days or possibly years, Rose pulled back from Sherlock's mouth if not his body as he kept her clutched tight to him. Her eyes fluttered open to take him in. His pale cheeks were flushed pink, his mouth swollen and red, his eyes nearly black, with only the thinnest edge of that strange blue-green color surrounding his dilated pupils. She grinned at him, knowing that she must look much the same.

"All right. _Now_ I'll see you later." With that, she wiggled from his arms and disappeared into the room, the door shutting decisively behind her.

Sherlock leaned his head back on the wall behind him and took several gulping breaths. What he _needed_ was a long, cold shower. What he had _time_ for was a few deep breaths and some mental exercises while he made tea and got dressed. He mentally cursed Rose Tyler while unable to wipe the slightly stupid grin off his face.

~?~?~?~?~

Sherlock had himself back under control. He was dressed, the tea was waiting, and he was playing his violin when he heard a creak on the stair that told him that someone was ascending. He knew who it was, but pretended that he did not, returning to the interrupted Bach.

The creaking of the door coincided with the end of the page if not the piece. Sherlock stopped and said, quietly, "most people knock." He shrugged and moved his violin from under his chin. "But then you're not most people, I suppose. Kettle's just boiled," he said, indicating the teapot with his bow.

"Johann Sebastian would be appalled," Moriarty said, moving across the room and taking an apple from the bowl on the coffee table and tossing it into the air. "May I?" he asked.

"Please," Sherlock responded, indicating John's chair with his bow.

Moriarty took Sherlock's seat.

"You know, when he was on his deathbed, Bach, he heard his son at the piano playing one of his pieces." Sherlock poured the tea as Moriarty talked. "The boy stopped before he got to the end."

"The dying man jumped out of his bed, ran straight to the piano and finished it," Sherlock completed the story, not allowing Moriarty to do so,

"Couldn't cope with an unfinished melody." Moriarty sounded pleased.

"Neither can you," Sherlock responded quickly. "It's why you've come."

"But be honest," Moriarty wheedled. "You're just a tiny bit pleased."

"What? With the verdict?"

"With me," Moriarty said with relish. "Back on the streets." The man smiled his snake's smile. "Every fairy tale needs a good old-fashioned villain."

"If you're looking for a fairy tale hero, you've come to the wrong place."

"No, I haven't," Moriarty said with a sip of his tea and a knowing glance at Sherlock. "You've got your Sancho in John- the fool too loyal to see you're a madman, and you've got your Dulcinea in little Rose Tyler- the peasant girl you think to turn into a lady. You've even got the curate in your dear brother- trying so hard to help you recover from your madness while you run off behind his back. Then you've got me. The giant to take on with your lance."

"Don't you read the papers?" Sherlock asked, annoyance lacing his voice. "Rose Tyler and I have not been together for weeks. She believes in little green men from Mars." He did not know the story of Don Quixote, though he knew from whence Moriarty took his references.

Moriarty smiled. "You forget, Sherlock, that I'm just as good as you are." He took a long, deep breath through his nose and whispered, "I can smell her. Orange blossoms and jasmine. It's a lovely scent, don't you think? I once followed her to where she buys it. Do you want to know where it is? You can pick some up for her for a gift."

Sherlock made a conscious effort to keep his temper in check. No emotions were to cross his face, even as he watched Moriarty close his eyes and draw his tongue across his top lip lightly, as though tasting Rose's scent in the air.

"She's been here today," Moriarty said, opening his eyes. He suddenly leaned forward and drew another deep breath through his nose. "I can smell her on you, Sherlock, so Don't. Lie. To. Me." His face went, suddenly and momentarily deranged. He relaxed back into a smile after a moment so brief that Sherlock might have imagined it, though he knew he had not.

"So, as I was saying," Moriarty continued, as though nothing had happened, "you need me, or you're nothing. Because we're just the same, you and I, except that you're boring. You're on the side of the angels."

Sherlock ignored this wander of Moriarty's and attempted to return him to the investigation at hand. "Got to the jury, of course."

Moriarty snorted in derision. "I got into the Tower of London. You think I worm my way twelve hotel rooms?"

A light went on in Sherlock's mind. How could he have been so foolish as to miss it? "Cable network."

Moriarty nodded, with a pleased smile. "Every hotel bedroom has a personalized TV screen, and every person has their pressure point, someone that they want to protect from harm." Moriarty knew Sherlock's. "Easy-peasy."

"So how are you gonna do it?" Sherlock asked, as though it didn't matter. "Burn me?"

"Oh, that's the problem, the final problem. Have you worked out what it is yet? The final problem? I did tell you, but did you listen?" Moriarty set his cup back in its saucer, tapping his leg in a nervous way.

It was the only sign of nerves that Sherlock had ever seen the man give and he watched the strange behavior- completely diverted by it.

"How hard do you find it?" Moriarty asked, bringing Sherlock's attention back to himself. "Having to say 'I don't know'?"

"I don't know," Sherlock said, allowing sarcasm to color his voice with anything but impassive patience for the first time.

"Oh, that's clever," Moriarty chuckled. "That's very clever. Awfully clever, well... Speaking of clever, have you told your little friends yet?"

"Told them what?"

"Why I broke into all those places and never took anything?"

"No," Sherlock answered. He'd told Rose, but he was not going to draw attention to her by bringing up that detail now.

"But you understand."

"Obviously."

"Off you go then," Moriarty said, taking a bite he had cut from the apple in his hand.

"You want me to tell you what you already know?" Sherlock asked in derision.

"No, I want you to prove that you know it."

"You didn't take anything because you don't need to," Sherlock said, tonelessly.

"Good," Moriarty said, urging him on.

"You'll never need to take anything again," Sherlock could feel some of the excitement creeping into his voice again. As much as he tried, Moriarty was somewhat right- this was what he lived for. Better than drugs, better than drink, better than _anything_.

Sherlock's memory assaulted him with the way Rose had felt crushed to him, his hands full of her soft curves, his mouth full of the flavor of her tongue, his nose full of her scent.

Not quite _anything_ , then.

"Very good," Moriarty said, bringing Sherlock back from the pool of Mnemosyne. "Because?" he prompted.

"Because nothing, nothing in the Bank of England, the Tower of London, Pentonville Prison or Torchwood could possibly match the value of the key that could get you into all four."

"I can open any door anywhere with a few tiny lines of computer code," Moriarty gloated. "No such thing as a private bank account now. They're all mine. No such thing as secrecy. I _own_ secrecy. Nuclear codes... I could blow up NATO in alphabetical order. In a world of locked rooms, the man with the key is king, and honey, you should see me in a crown."

"You were advertising all the way through the trial," Sherlock said, unable to keep the note of admiration out of his voice. "You were showing the world what you can do."

"And you were helping," Moriarty said, smugly. "Big client list... Rogue governments, intelligence communities, terror cells, they all want me. Suddenly, I'm Mr. Sex."

"You can break any bank. What do you care about the highest bidder?"

"I don't. I just like to watch them all competing. Daddy loves me best," he mocked. "Aren't ordinary people adorable? Well, you would know, you've got John and Rose. I should get a live-in one, or a bed-warmer. Must be so funny."

"Why are you doing all this? You don't want money or power, not really," Sherlock was watching Moriarty through narrowed eyes as though he might see into the man's mind and pick out his motives.

"Funny, you got part of it wrong though. The Tower, Pentonville, the Bank of England... you're right about those, but Torchwood. I didn't leave Torchwood empty-handed. I have your Rose, Sherlock."

"What is it all for?" For the first time, Sherlock was frightened. Moriarty had Rose's files. Even he had not seen them, though he knew most of what they contained. He kept that fear from his voice, however. Pretended it didn't matter.

"I want to solve the problem," Moriarty said, leaning forward toward Sherlock. "Our problem. The final problem." He looked down at the ground. "It's going to start very soon, Sherlock, the fall." He whistled, like a descending bomb. "But don't be scared. Falling's just like flying. Except there's a more permanent destination."

The two men's eyes met. Black, emotionless eyes met blue-gold, star-flecked eyes. They stared for a moment until Sherlock rose.

"I never liked riddles," he said, straightening his jacket.

"Learn to." Moriarty's voice was a flat, dead thing. "Because I owe you a fall, Sherlock. I. Owe. You. The Big Bad Wolf is going to blow your house down." With that ominous pronouncement, Moriarty walked out of the flat.

Sherlock looked down and found the apple that the other man had been worrying and the knife with which he had been worrying it lying on the tea tray. He had carved the letters 'I.O.U.' into the skin of the fruit.

Sherlock picked up his phone and send a text to Mycroft.


	9. Falling Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Oh dear, everybody... it looks like someone left a curseword in this chapter. A big one. Just thought I'd let you know, in case that kind of thing upsets you.**

Sherlock's body was broken on the ground, blood pooling around his head. His brilliant eyes were closed, his pale face devoid of all color. She knew without touching him, without coming another step closer that he was dead. The fact of it, the knowledge began to freeze her from the inside, beginning in the chamber of her heart where he had taken up residence and moving out from there.

Sherlock's body was suddenly transformed into the Doctor's body. Blue wool was replaced by brown. Blood-soaked black curls replaced by water-drenched brown strands. He was stretched on a gurney and his sonic screwdriver fell from his hand and rolled across the ground, ignored by the people around him. Her stomach roiled. This was not how it was supposed to go.

_Stars will fall. Save them, Bad Wolf._

Rose woke to find that she had fallen asleep with her head on a laboratory table. Again.

Five days before… Rose looked at her watch, 3 AM… Six days before, she and Mickey had arrived in Cardiff in the early evening to find the entire team waiting in the Hub for them. Jake, Ianto, Alec and Peter had been called in as well and were en route. Rose and Mickey had gone over the evidence, but had chosen to wait until the morning to announce their decision. She wanted everyone there.

She had known though, before they had looked at a single report. Before they had entered the Hub. Before they had even left the limits of London.

Rose had fallen asleep in the car practically the moment that Mickey had turned the key. Her dream was nothing and everything. Golden light, singing, and the words: _Stars will fall. Save them, Bad Wolf._ Then there was Sherlock's face which transformed slowly into the Doctor's. She had woken with a gasp that scared Mickey. They'd barely been outside the city when she turned to him and said "we'll have to find the Doctor."

"Yeah," Mickey sighed, not understanding. "I think we might have to, but we'll look at…"

"No," Rose said, and there was such power and conviction behind the word that Mickey stopped short. "I _know_ that we'll have to find the Doctor. Not sure what we're facing, but we can't do it without him."

Mickey stole a quick glance at her before returning his eyes to the road. "What's up, babe?"

"Don't really know" she said, shaking her head. "Remember the project that you and I were working on before Norway? What did you call it?"

"The dimension cannon," Mickey answered. The project had been scrapped after their trip to Norway when the Doctor had warned Rose that the universes would collapse if he and his TARDIS tried to get through. Rose had been certain that her clumsy efforts would be even worse. Mickey had never told her, but he had been relieved that she had given up on it. "Think that's our best bet?"

"I do," she said simply, then elaborated. "The science was always sound, the issue was more that all of those safeguards that we put in place to try to _not_ put holes in the walls of the universes? Bet those are what kept it from working. Now, I think we're going to find that there's something bigger at work than just holes through the void- the kind of thing that makes that an acceptable risk."

She'd been right.

Daleks. Bloody Daleks. _Fucking_ Daleks.

After she and the Doctor had left this universe the first time, he had explained to her that Time Lords only existed in one universe (the Prime universe, though she never called it that to anyone from Pete's World). Daleks, did exist in other universes, though Rose had not yet found evidence of them much in this one. Perhaps they had extended their reign of destruction in another direction, across another galaxy. Without the Doctor to antagonize them, the Daleks may never have bothered to find Earth. Regardless, at the center of the wave of nothing that Torchwood was now studying were ships of a design that Rose would never forget.

The universe was not equipped to deal with Daleks without the help of the Time Lords. Since there was only the one, they would have to go and get him.

The announcement had gone over exactly as well as Rose might have hoped.

"Why does it have to be you?" This from Alec. The gruff Glaswegian tended to be overprotective of women in general and her in particular, though she had made it clear that she was not in the market.

"How long do we have to get the cannon working?" Dr. Freeman tended to be a bit more practical than the average scientist.

"Are there any safety features that we ought to add to it before we send someone through?" Tosh worried for Rose's safety.

"Are you going alone?" Jake worried for Rose as well.

"What happens to us if you don't make it back?" Several people hissed when Dr. Turlough asked this, but Rose could not fault him the question.

"It has to be me because the Doctor knows me, he trusts me, and…" Rose trailed off.

"He'll forgive you," Mickey finished for her.

"Exactly," she sighed. "As for how quick it needs to be done… well, if we fail at this, it would appear that the entire fabric of reality will come undone, so I suppose we won't have much to complain about. However, I'm not interested in no longer existing and having never existed, so quick as you can is probably my best bet."

Rose's attempt at humor fell a bit flat- everyone was too tense for that. She sighed again. "I don't know how long we have, so we have to assume that we have too little time. Safety features would be fantastic, and we have to be able to come back because it's going to take some time to pinpoint when in the Doctor's timeline we need to arrive. It may seem weird, but we can't show up an instant after I last saw him or anything because time doesn't really work like that. We'll have to find him at the right time, or we could ruin things that the Doctor needs to do."

"How will you know?" Fitz Turlough, temporal physicist, was always curious about the nature of time travel and always seemed to ask the questions that required the longest explanation.

"Two reasons. First is that exposure to the time vortex by traveling through it results in Artron Radiation buildup which is mostly harmless, but it changes your brain chemistry and basically fast-evolves your temporal senses so that you can kind of feel whether an event can or can't be changed. It takes years of active exposure though. I had two years, and it's only barely enough to notice. Second reason though is that we're not going to be tracing the Doctor, we're going to be tracing the TARDIS, his ship, using my key. She is an eleven-dimensional, sentient, psychic, time-and-space ship who is, among other things, my friend and will know if we have arrived at a good moment and will then let me know. I hope."

Rose looked around the room, meeting the eyes of her small family and saw no reproach. No one begrudged her this admission of uncertainty because they were all feeling it. Even Owen held no judgment in his eyes, and she wondered if it was the effect of impending parenthood that had done it.

There was one comment though. "Sentient time-and-space ship?" Sarah's voice was a bit weak.

Rose sighed. "I'll tell loads of stories about the bigger-on-the-inside 1950s Police Box in which I spent two years of my life once we save the universe. Okay, on to the other questions. It was asked whether I am going alone. Answer: No. Mickey is coming with me, he's already volunteered, and the Doctor knows him as well. For the first jump or two it'll just be the two of us, but if we decide we need more people we'll take volunteers. Speaking of which, Mick and I are going to be in Cardiff for the duration, so we'll need two people to go to London and keep an eye on things there. Anyone interested?"

"You haven't answered the last question," Dr. Stewart reminded her.

Rose shook her head. "Too clever by half, the lot of you. What happens to you if I don't make it back? If it's just me, Mickey will become the new director of Torchwood. He'll take care of you. If it's both of us- if something happens to the cannon and we get stuck on the wrong side of the void, or if we die, Torchwood will go back to Pete Tyler."

"Have you spoken to him about that?" Ianto asked, surprised.

"No, not yet," she answered, shaking her head. Things had been tense with her parents since she had sent Pete away from Torchwood, but for her little brother's sake they had reconciled. "How long do you think it'll take to be ready for the first jump?" Rose asked Doctors Stewart, Turlough and Freeman.

"I'll have to take a look at it," Rory Stewart said, "but I don't think it's liable to be less than four months. I remember we hadn't gotten very far the first time around, so we can't do much faster, sorry Rose."

Rose shook her head at the young-looking man. "No problem. Like I say, Mickey and I are down here for the duration. We'll take the rooms here in the hub so we don't have to start paying a second rent each, but we'll have to go back to London on occasion. Talk to our families and friends. Say goodbyes, of a sort. Visit solicitors and deal with wills…" Rose trailed off, not wanting to think these depressing thoughts. They were practical, but not joyful.

"Oh Rose…"

Rose raised her eyes to Gwen's tear-filled ones across the table. "No, Gwen, don't. Please. We'll be fine, I shouldn't have said anything."

"What will we tell your mum and Pete and Tony? What will we tell John and Sherlock if you never come back?" Gwen was crying in earnest now.

"Mum and Pete will tell Tony that his sister died defending the Earth. Better, they'll tell him that she's having adventures with a mad alien in another universe and no one in my family need ever know if I died. I can become Schrodinger's daughter. John will be told I died, as will Sherlock. John will mourn me. I don't know that Sherlock is capable."

"Rose…"

"Honestly, Gwen, it'll be fine. Don't bother telling Sherlock anything. We're not together. John will tell him what he thinks he needs to know."

Mickey looked sideways at Rose, but she would hold to the story, as she had been instructed. She was pleased, however, when he did not challenge her.

"All right," Rose said, trying to insert some joviality into her voice and failing, "any further questions? Because if not, it's time to get working. Things are going to be pretty terrible for the foreseeable future."

The group broke up at her suggestion, though sideways glances were sent towards both her and Mickey. Rose wondered if they thought she was suicidal. She wondered if maybe she was. She didn't want to die, but she knew that the mission had a minimal chance of success. She would do it, however. She would go to the end of any universe to keep the world safe- to keep her Mum and Pete and Tony and Gwen and Jake and Ianto and John and... and Sherlock safe. She would run any dangers for them. All of them. She would keep them safe.

~?~?~?~?~

After that, the work had begun in earnest. Sleeping in the Hub meant that Rose's days started earlier than anyone's and tended to go later.

She started having dreams in the little room off the main part of the hub that she had claimed for her own. At first it was all golden light and singing and Sherlock's face changing into the Doctor's. Every time: Sherlock and the Doctor. And the words. _Stars will fall._

The images changed every night however. At first it was their faces. Then Sherlock's face was surrounded by blood, the Doctor's by water. Their eyes were closed, and skin pale, waxy, deathly. Sherlock was crumpled on the ground, a growing pool of blood around his head. The Doctor was laid out on a gurney, his sonic screwdriver falling from his limp hand.

Then one night, she saw Sherlock hit the ground. He had fallen.

She saw the Doctor stand passive as the waters rose around him. He had fallen.

_Save them, Bad Wolf._


	10. Naughty Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter.

He had been so sure that Sherlock would keep her close. After he'd threatened her, he'd expected the detective to guard his queen, but Sherlock had surprised him, and so had she. She'd slipped away. He knew that she wasn't in London. He'd have found her if she was.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

He read through her file again. He was beginning to see what the great detective saw in the blonde. He'd thought it was only sex, but it was more than that- she was the ultimate mystery. The ultimate impossibility.

She was spectacular.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

He wanted to steal her away now, not just to hurt Sherlock, but so that he could have her for his own. She was so far from ordinary.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

And then there was Torchwood itself. All that technology. All that knowledge. He'd have to get Rose away from Sherlock simply because she had so much power behind her. Torchwood might be a shadow of its former self, but the technology was still there, and Rose Tyler was Torchwood.

And then there was her code name.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

It was fate. Fate that had led her to Sherlock and thereby to him. Fate because she was no princess needing the hero to save her. She was like him: a wolf. And at the end of this fairy tale the wolves would find their mates. But first, he had to find her. He knew she would come back, but he hoped that she came back in enough time. He could find her, but he'd prefer for her to come to him.

His phone went off. He glanced down and smiled. It was time to begin Sherlock's downfall. He would lay a trail of breadcrumbs for the detective to follow, but they would be swept away by the wind, leaving him lost in the forest. The wanderer would come home and find a wolf dressed in the clothes of his lady-love. He would cry wolf, as little boys are wont to do and no one would believe him. Like an old madman, he would stand before his giants and discover them to be windmills. Forsaken by friends and abandoned by family, his star would fall.

 _The Big Bad Wolf_.

And the final nail in the coffin, the final straw was that Rose- Sherlock's Rose- would be the one to finally push him over the edge. He would make certain of it.

The Big Bad Wolf would gobble Sherlock right up.

_The Big Bad Wolf._


	11. Stars Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I know, yesterday's update was far too short. I'm a jerk that way!
> 
> Today's update is much longer, as are all of the chapters from here on out.
> 
> As ever, I love getting reviews and favorites and follows and everything. You guys are absolute stars!

Rose looked at her phone in concern. Six weeks of dreams. She'd watched the Doctor drown and Sherlock fall so many times that she imagined that she could draw them- were she able to draw. Forty-two times she'd seen Sherlock's pale, waxy face, his dark hair matted by blood. Forty-two times the Doctor's bloated face, freckles obliterated, hair lank against his forehead.

She had begun to dread sleep. She only succumbed to it when she could no longer avoid it- head on a laboratory table or leaned back in her desk chair. Everyone was working themselves mad to get the cannon ready so no one had yet noticed that Rose worked later and started earlier than anyone else.

Almost no one.

"Something's eating the Big Bad Wolf," Mickey pronounced, flopping into a chair across the lab bench from Rose.

"Clever turn of phrase," was her irritable reply. Of course Mickey would notice. He noticed everything. Really, he was worse than Sherlock about it.

"I thought so." Mickey completely ignored her irritation. "Now tell me what's wrong. You're barely sleeping."

"I don't see how you could possibly know that," Rose groused.

"I sleep in the room next to yours." Mickey was all infinite patience which just irritated Rose further.

"And you can hear me _not_ sleeping through the walls?"

"No, see that's the thing. I can hear you not in your room every single night. The very few times in the last three weeks that I've seen you sleep, it's been at a desk or on the break room couch or sitting in a chair. You literally never go to bed."

Rose sighed. Mickey was actually right, and she could hardly deny the fact. "Yeah, okay," she said, resigned. "I can't sleep."

"Can't or won't? 'Cause don't think I've missed the fact that the woman who might as well be the poster-child for Twinings has taken to drinking coffee since we arrived in Cardiff."

"I never use bagged tea if I can help it," Rose said, haughtily. Mickey raised an eyebrow at her and she sighed again, knowing that her deflection hadn't worked. She hadn't really expected it to, anyway. "All right, fine, I won't sleep. I've been having these dreams, see? Ever since the stars started going out- visions of the Doctor and Sherlock both. But they're dead, both of them. The Doctor drowns, and Sherlock falls off a building. And then the words 'stars will fall, save them Bad Wolf.'"

"Bad Wolf? But Rose, wasn't that..."

"Yeah. Bad Wolf was me, controlling all of time and space to save the Doctor only to end up killing him. Don't think I don't know, Mick. I took the name because it was powerful, but it was dangerous too."

"So is it the Bad Wolf that's killing them or..."

"No." It was a statement. An absolute certainty. "I am the Bad Wolf, at least in part. The creature that was at work that day was me, the TARDIS, and all of Time and Space. I would never kill Sherlock or the Doctor, no matter what. The Bad Wolf was created out of my desire to save the Doctor. No way."

"If the Bad Wolf is the TARDIS... what difference would Sherlock make to her?"

Rose shook her head again. "I was the Bad Wolf too, Mick. I'd never... No. Anyway it's 'save them, Bad Wolf.'"

Mickey could see the worry and fear in her eyes so he abandoned that line of questioning. He'd always worried about 'Bad Wolf,' ever since that time in Cardiff with the Doctor in leather and Jack Harkness and the Slitheen. The Doctor had seemed so afraid of the words, and if it made the Doctor afraid, Mickey thought it had to be... terrible. But Rose had nearly died, and Mickey could think of little in the universe more terrible than that.

"So... how are you going to save them? Either of them?"

"Well, the first step to saving the Doctor is obviously getting into that universe. That's what the scientists are up to with that cannon, so not much more I can do there."

"True enough," Mickey agreed. "What about Sherlock though? He's here."

"I know... and I'm really not sure."

"You said he fell?"

"Yeah, or jumped or was pushed off the side of St. Bart's hospital."

"You recognized the building?"

"Last night was the first time. It's been weird. There's been more detail and more information every time I see it, like it's getting closer, which worries me a lot, obviously."

"Naturally, but Rose… you say Sherlock is going to fall? Like… drop out of the sky?"

"Yeah…" Rose seemed unsure where this line of questioning was going.

"Babe, we're working on something _right now_ to do with that, haven't you been paying attention?"

"On the dimension cannon?"

"Yeah."

"Something to keep someone from falling off a building?"

"No, something to save them if they do."

"What..." Rose trailed off, everything finally clicking into place. "The inertia dampener," she breathed.

"Exactly," Mickey replied with a grin.

Towards the beginning of the new dimension cannon project, Dr. Freeman had been looking at the projections and made an observation.

"This thing is very hard to steer."

Rose had been less sleep-deprived at the time and had restrained herself to only rolling her eyes at the scientist's penchant for stating the obvious.

"Yeah, that's why we're using the key to track the TARDIS. Don't want to end up just anywhere in time or space, yeah?" Rose thought that she had held the impatience from her voice quite admirably.

"But that's exactly the thing, isn't it?" Dr. Freeman had looked at her then as though she were missing something entirely obvious.

Rose glared back at him. She'd received enough of that look from the Doctor when she had traveled with him and from Sherlock now that she was not interested in accepting it from someone who, technically, worked for her.

"Let's explain in complete sentences, Doctor," Rose said with a bite of impatience.

"That ship can go anywhere and anywhen- you said it yourself," Dr. Freeman explained. "Who's to say that it's not parked in orbit or on an alien planet where you can't breathe or…"

"The Doctor would never go somewhere that was unsafe for his companions."

"But who's to say he's still taking human companions? He could have aliens or monsters or even be by himself."

Rose didn't like to think of the Doctor being alone. He wouldn't do well alone, she thought. And she had a hard time picturing him with a non-human companion, but she supposed he'd had K-9 for a long time, and he wasn't human… maybe he'd traveled with aliens before as well.

"Okay," Rose conceded. "Is there a way to restrict it to Earth? If we can't do what we need to do on Earth, hopefully the TARDIS will be able to let me know, but maybe the first few just leave us on Earth?"

"That'll fix some of the problems, yeah, but what if he's parked on the side of a cliff? What's to stop you from materializing over the crevasse? Or, if he's parked on a ship or a zeppelin or something? What's to keep you from materializing two miles in the air?"

"Okay, I see what you're saying. So… we'll need something to keep us from going splat and… a minute of oxygen? Just for when we materialize? It's not much time, but it's enough to hit the "return" switch and come back, yeah?"

Dr. Freeman looked thoughtful. "We've something we took off a Sontaran the last time we ran into them that might help with the 'splat' issue. It's a personal inertial dampener. It slows down a projectile as it comes toward you, rendering it harmless. I think that, with just a bit of jiggery-pokery, we can have it work so that if you fall, it cushions you."

"Jiggery-pokery?" Rose asked. She didn't think she'd ever told anyone that phrase… the one the Doctor had used so early in their friendship. It gave her a weird feeling around her heart.

"Yeah, it's a technical term."

Rose shook the odd sensation off. "And the oxygen?"

"I'll have to see what's in the archives, but we might have something that can work."

"Good plan. Thanks Arthur."

The inertial dampener had proven surprisingly simple to modify. They now had several button-size devices that could be attached to clothes or even carried in the pocket that would halt your inertia on anything from a 10-foot to a 2-mile drop. Rose had joked that they could all become mountain climbers now.

Rose looked up at Mickey with a sparkle back in her eyes. "You're a genius, you are!"

"You're just now figuring that out, are you?"

"Mickey the Idiot, remember?"

"Ah, he always meant it with love."

"Yeah, he did," Rose agreed.

"Well, there you go, babe," Mickey said, patting her shoulder. "All you needed to do was ask the right person."

"And it's always you, is it?" Rose asked with a grin.

"Near enough, yeah." Mickey shot her an answering grin and sauntered away from her.

Once he was away, the smile fell from Rose's face. She was pleased with Mickey's idea and would give Sherlock the dampener as soon as she was able, but she had a strange intuition that there was more to it than that. Why St. Bart's? Such a public place. Sherlock was a show-off, but it seemed to her that he would keep his death private. That the great Sherlock Holmes succumbed to the human weakness of death would be something that he would prefer to hide, she thought. But if it was a murder, the question remained- why would one murder another person in public where there was such a high likelihood of getting caught?

Something niggled in the back of Rose's head, and she could not help but think that, perhaps, there was something to that image she had seen in her head so many times.

Rose pulled out her phone and looked at a phone number that she had never called. She'd had the number for months, but she was afraid of the reception her ringing would elicit.

Molly Hooper was the only person Rose knew besides John who would do literally _anything_ for the detective. And if Sherlock was nervous enough to keep Rose from texting him, she had to believe that John wasn't safe either.

Rose sighed and hit the 'Call' button. The person on the other end picked up after three rings.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Molly? Molly Hooper?"

"This is she, may I ask who's calling?"

"This is Rose. Rose Tyler. You gave me your number a few months back…"

"Yeah, I remember." The pathologist's voice had gone a bit cold. She and Rose hadn't necessarily parted on the best of terms, but Rose had hoped for a bit more than this.

"Right well… I couldn't think of who else to call. I'm… I'm worried about Sherlock."

"Why didn't you call John?"

"I guess… call it paranoia, I suppose. I think it's you that I need. Molly, would you say that Sherlock is suicidal?"

"I… well I don't know. I wouldn't have thought so but… I don't know."

"Look, I'm not saying that he is but… would you keep an eye on him? I'm in Cardiff now and can't do it myself. Just… make sure he's okay, yeah?"

"What are you doing in Cardiff?"

"Saving the world," Rose said flippantly (though it was true). "Look, there's another thing that I want to ask you. If Sherlock had to die… would you help me?"

"What?" Molly sounded shocked and horrified.

"Let me explain…"

~?~?~?~?~

It had been weeks since Sherlock had seen her. Nearly seven weeks, to be precise. No calls. No texts. Almost since he'd met her, he had never gone this long without hearing from her. He knew it was sensible- it kept both of them safe, but her absence was beginning to weigh on him. He would reach for his phone to ask her a question. On Saturdays he found that he could not settle to any task because he kept expecting her to arrive. Every knock on the door of 221 made his heart leap with anticipation. It was all very peculiar- he knew that he could not speak to her and that she would not arrive without warning him first.

Sherlock could not quantify the response.

John, however, could.

"You miss her," John said on the seventh Saturday after Jim Moriarty's trial.

Sherlock looked up from the pages of Robert Burns that he had not been reading, merely staring at. "Beg pardon?"

"You miss Rose."

"I've told you why we are not communicating just now, John. Don't be absurd. It would be foolish for me to miss her."

John nodded his agreement. "Foolish, illogical, human, and entirely what's going on here."

"Shut up, John," Sherlock grumbled, returning his attention to the page. His roommate grinned, knowing that this was as good as a confession from the detective.

Twenty minutes later, John pulled out his laptop- he had an idea to see if anyone had suggested a case on the website to take his roommate's mind off things. Sherlock still hadn't turned a page, which meant he was still brooding. The between-case depressions weren't quite as bad as they'd been before Rose had entered their lives, but they could still get worrisome, and with Rose away, John feared a return to incidents like the one just before the Baskerville case.

He had noticed, some weeks before, that Sherlock had stopped using nicotine patches between cases. He continued to do so when he needed mental stimulation, but no longer as a means to effectively get high. A week or so after this observation, following a rather horrible case that had ended in a man dead before John and Sherlock's eyes, the doctor had been expecting to babysit his shaking roommate through the night, but he had stepped out of the shower to find his flat empty and Sherlock's coat and scarf gone. John had feared the worst and had been debating calling Lestrade and Mycroft when he'd received a text message from Rose saying that Sherlock was with her, not to call the cavalry, and that she would keep an eye on him that night. The man in question had arrived home the next day looking better rested and more at peace than John had ever seen him after a night like that.

Nothing useful on the blog, just a few comments on the latest update. John sighed. Mrs. Hudson had commented, John's therapist and... a stranger? John looked at the comment. It was a bit critical of Sherlock, but otherwise fairly ordinary. He was about to move on when he remembered his promise to Sherlock to mention any blog comments that were unusual as it was the way that Rose would reach him. John read through the comment again and noticed something that made him grin. His time with Sherlock had clearly not been wasted, whatever the Detective might say in his more acerbic moments.

"Sherlock?" John waited for the other man to lift his eyes from the page. "There's something a bit odd on the blog today."

"I can hardly express how little I care about your foray into the world of internet media."

"Yeah, I thought you might say that, but the funny thing is that it's a comment about how you're not so impressive as all that. And, I noticed that if you take the first letter of every sentence, it spells a word. You'll never guess what word."

John smirked as the detective's eyes sharpened on him. He had the other man's interest.

"The letters spell the word 'Rose.'"

Sherlock was at John's elbow in a moment, shifting impatiently as John expanded the comment by itself so that they could both read it.

_Username: 5Mark19_

_Really, I think all this hype about Sherlock is over-blown. Only I heard that anyone can train themselves to observe like that. See, you just have to do these memory practice things every day. Even an idiot could do it, that's what I've heard._

Sherlock and John stared at the message for several long minutes. Sherlock tried to glean more information from the message itself before turning his attention to the username. The two numbers corresponded to the words 'this' and 'themselves' or possibly 'train,' none of which gave him any headway on determining the full message. Then there was her choice of the name 'Mark.' What could that mean?

"So... what am I missing, Sherlock. What's she saying?"

"I have not determined it yet. Look at the username. What does that say to you?"

John looked at it for a moment. Five, Mark, nineteen. It sounded a bit like a speed, or instructions for a pilot, but that had not been John's area of the military, so he could not be certain.

"Here's an idea," John said after a moment. He typed '5 Mark 19' into the search engine on his browser. Every response on the first page brought up the bible verse Mark 5:19. "Looks like maybe it's from the bible," John said in surprise.

Sherlock walked to the bookcase and took the dusty old bible from the top shelf. It was there only as a reference document. His parents had insisted on a certain amount of religious education when he was small, but he had willfully chosen to forget everything he had learned.

He turned to the necessary page and read the verse.

' _Howbeit Jesus suffered him not, but saith unto him, Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee.'_

Sherlock read it through twice, trying to suss the meaning. Suddenly, like a light dawning, it came clear in his mind.

"She's coming home," Sherlock murmured.

"What?" John asked.

"Did you read the verse?" Sherlock asked.

"Yeah."

"Didn't you understand it?"

"No, but I understand shockingly little of what you and Rose get up to," John teased.

Sherlock glared at him but continued. "She is coming home to her friends to ..." Sherlock checked the verse again, "tell them how great things the Lord hath done for her. Well, probably not the last bit, but she is returning to London."

"Brilliant," John said, brightly. "When?"

"That, John," said Sherlock, stealing his flatmate's computer away, "is exactly the question I intend to ask."

John rolled his eyes, but was pleased to see the energy in his friend again.

After approximately 30 minutes searching the internet for a verse with which to respond (Sherlock preferred to take from one of the books that had a name that could be used in the modern world, Psalms, Hezekiah and Deuteronomy, for instance, were immediately thrown out) and another 20 minutes of constrained composition, Sherlock had his response. He used the same form that Rose had done to answer, knowing that she would be able to decipher that code, but might have trouble with a more difficult one.

_Username: 14Luke23_

_Who asked you? He's brilliant, Sherlock Holmes is! Even when it seems like the case is lost, he manages to pull it out. Never come back, wanker!_

The verse was an obscure one, which was all for the best. ' _And the lord said unto the servant, Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.'_ He hoped that she understood that he was asking her to come to Baker Street, but he'd had trouble finding a verse that expressed exactly what he intended. The question in the body of the text was, as John had put it, simply 'when.'

Sherlock posted the response to the blog and sat to wait. He picked up the Burns again, but found that he could not even pretend to focus on it. He put it away on the shelf and wandered into the kitchen to set up his microscope. He had a hemoglobin experiment that he had been putting off for a few weeks. It would occupy his mind until they heard from Rose again.

John kept an eye on his blog comments, hoping to catch Rose's response as soon as it came up. He surfed the internet and read some articles to keep his mind occupied. It took nearly three hours for her to respond, but when he heard John make a noise in the sitting room, Sherlock was at his side almost faster than thinking.

_Username: 14John2_

_Oi, none of that now. No one is the police around here. Everyone has the right to make their opinions known. We all read this blog because we like and follow Sherlock Holmes. Even the bloke up there, I'll bet. Everyone just calm down okay? Keep the drama out._

"Next week," John deciphered from the text while Sherlock flipped through the bible again.

Sherlock read from the book in his hand, " _In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you._ "

"So she wants you to meet her at her parents' place?"

Sherlock nearly shuddered at the thought of spending time with Jackie Tyler. He tended to avoid those family gatherings that she invited him to unless Rose absolutely required it of him. He thought of how difficult it would be to get to the Tyler estate without anyone seeing him. He considered, briefly, telling Rose that it would be impossible, but he knew he would manage it. If Rose asked something of him, the word 'no' was not in Sherlock's vocabulary.

He worked out his next comment over the course of the next twenty minutes and posted.

_Username: 1Ruth16_

_Totally love your blog, Doctor Watson! Usually I just read and don't really comment, but this seemed like a good chance to chime in. Everything that first guy said is true. Some people are naturally inclined to having good memories though. Don't write Sherlock Holmes off completely. Anyway, that's pretty much all I had to say. You all keep arguing though!_

This time the verse was fairly famous. " _And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God."_ Sherlock suggested 'Tuesday' in the body of the comment as well.

Once the comment was posted, Sherlock returned to his microscope, and John to his browsing. After only an hour, John called Sherlock back to examine another message.

_Username: 2BO8OK17_

_Maybe this whole thing is getting a bit out of hand. I think we should just step away from it. Someone is likely to say something they regret. So I say that we stop. You all okay with that? Only it's just that the internet is a bad place for this kind of argument. Understand though, I don't want to tell you what to do._

The two men frowned at the username for several moments, neither of them even looking at the body of text. Sherlock found it strange that she would update the code mid-stream. He also found it concerning.

"It's the word 'book' with an eight in the middle of it," John murmured after a few moments. "Could she be talking about... I dunno... the Harry Potter series or something? She likes those books, right?"

"The Harry Potter series has seven books, John," Sherlock snapped, "and as we've been using the bible since the beginning, I would consider that the first place to start."

Sherlock flipped open the front of the bible he had been using and counted the books. He stopped on the eighth book and realized that it was Ruth.

"Clever girl," he murmured.

"What?" John asked.

"She needed another quote from Ruth, but she didn't want it to be obvious that we were repeating books, so she changed the code a bit. Chapter and verse, please, John."

"Two-seventeen."

Sherlock read aloud, "' _So she gleaned in the field until even, and beat out that she had gleaned: and it was about an ephah of barley.'_ "

"Something about the barley then? Beer or bread?" John asked, looking confused.

"I think the simpler explanation is that she wants me to come in the evening," Sherlock said, slight impatience with John colouring his voice. "What does the other message say?"

John glanced at the message and started to laugh.

"What does it say?" Sherlock asked again, shocked.

"Read it yourself." John got out of the chair to allow Sherlock to sit and read.

As Sherlock deciphered 'miss you' from the message, John watched the slight blush tinge the detective's cheeks and the barest hint of a smile come over the man's lips.

Sherlock glanced up and saw the amusement sparkling in his roommate's blue eyes. "Shut up, John."

~?~?~?~?~

Really, the two of them were a bit like teenagers. It was almost embarrassing to watch them like this. It did verify his recent feelings about Sherlock: ordinary. The side of the Angels. Boring.

But then there was Rose. He'd had such high hopes for the Bad Wolf, but here she was making goo-goo eyes at Sherlock on John's blog.

'Miss you,' indeed.

But now he knew where she'd be. She'd never make the Tuesday meeting with Sherlock because as soon as she was in London again, she would be his.

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

Honestly, he'd be doing Sherlock a favor with this fall. Sherlock's new 'final problem' was that he had become ordinary. Giving up his brilliance for a girl.

_The Big Bad Wolf._

He'd thought finding Rose would make up for losing Sherlock- the Bad Wolf who would be his mate- but in the end, but it looked like he'd have to kill her too. So sad.

The two of them were just being **so stupid**. They knew he'd track their phones, but did they really think that he didn't read John's blog? Or that he'd be too stupid understand their little code?

This was why he preferred ordinary people dead to alive. They made him so unbearably angry sometimes.

These two were like him though... just not enough. In the end they were boring. Ordinary. Disappointing. No one was ever quite right.

And they'd both fall.

_The Big Bad Wolf._


	12. The Freak and The Follower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning about this chapter: it might not make as much sense as it should if you have not watched the Sherlock episode Reichenbach Fall. I really didn't want to go over the episode scene-by-scene, so we're kind of jumping around a bit. So, if it's been awhile since you watched that episode, I do suggest watching it. I'll still be here once you have!

>

John fled his flat and the madman with whom he shared it. He'd been interested (in a clinical way) in how Sherlock would respond to this type of anticipation: today was the day that he was scheduled to see Rose again. John had wondered if Sherlock would bounce from task to task or if he would spend the day holed up in his bedroom, or if he'd chain smoke cigarettes or any of a thousand other options that John thought might fit the nature of the man he lived with.

What he had not expected was for Sherlock to wake at a reasonable hour, shower, shave, dress, pick up a cup of tea, sit down in his chair and fail to move again.

This was not the torpor of a danger night when the detective would sit because he had no desire to do anything else. Nor was this the stillness of a perusal of Sherlock's mind palace where there seemed a buzzing about the detective as though the speed at which his mind moved were audible. On this day, the tension in the man was palpable, rolling off of him in waves. He was movement in stillness, restrained kinesis and John eventually decided that he could not take it anymore. He manufactured some errands to run to remove himself from Baker Street and the tense, waiting presence of his flatmate for a few hours.

The first of those errands was the cash-point and, naturally, it was there that his plans for the day fell apart. After arriving and turning over his card, the machine seemed to have an error.

_There is a problem with your card._

_Please wait._

_Thank you for your patience._

_John._

John sighed. He remembered a time in his life when this sort of thing would have been strange, but as he turned and saw a subtly expensive black car with tinted windows pull up behind him, he remembered that those days were long-since over.

~?~?~?~?~

As John returned to Baker Street after his rather fascinating chat with Mycroft, he couldn't seem to help casting a suspicious eye over every pedestrian that he passed. Were they trying to kill Sherlock? Was Mycroft just being paranoid?

And then there had been that brief moment as John had gotten up to leave.

" _So you want me to watch out for your brother because he won't accept your help."_

" _If it's not too much trouble."_

_John shook his head and reached for the door, wanting nothing more than to be out of the supercilious presence of Mycroft Holmes when he spoke again._

" _Have you spoken with Rose Tyler since Sunday?"_

_John turned to face the other man, still seated, looking at him suspiciously._

" _Rose hasn't spoken to me since she and Sherlock broke up save for a few minutes at the trial a couple of months ago."_

" _Please don't act like I'm stupid, John," Mycroft said, narrowing his eyes. "I'm perfectly aware that my brother and Ms. Tyler have not ended their association."_

" _Your brothers 'associations' aren't either of our business, are they?"_

" _She arrived in town on Sunday with her friend, Mr. Smith. She has not been seen since. Sherlock asked me to keep an eye on Moriarty's movements and to let him know if the man left London. You have been in London, as have I, which means that he is interested in the welfare of Ms. Tyler, who is not. I have not caught sight of her since she returned on Sunday, and if Sherlock is concerned about her, I must make myself concerned about her."_

" _We haven't spoken to her, no," John admitted. "But Sherlock has plans to see her tonight. If she's not there, I've no doubt he'll let you know." And with that, John left._

John was worried about Rose. He'd tell Sherlock that she was gone as soon as he got back to the flat. Perhaps that would galvanize the man into doing something other than stare at the clock for the next... John checked his watch... six hours or so.

John climbed out of the car at his Baker Street flat. It looked like Mrs. Hudson was having something repaired, or possibly it was the cafe next door. There were workmen streaming in and out of the doors. John picked up the mail and noticed a strange envelope. It was made out of thick, yellow parchment and sealed with a wax seal- some type of bird. John tore the top open and found... breadcrumbs?

Rose was more important than strange letters just at that moment, however, so John stuck the envelope in his pocket and climbed the stairs to his flat.

"Sherlock, there's something weird..." John cut off when he found Lestrade and Donovan in the flat with Sherlock. "What's going on?"

"Kidnapping," Sherlock bit off. Lestrade and his team showing up had been an unpleasant surprise. He'd hoped to be uninterrupted today until he could see Rose, but here the police were, needing him to sort out their issues. He might have sent them away, but it was children, and he knew what Rose would say if he chose to see her over helping children.

"Rufus Brule, the ambassador to the U.S." Lestrade clarified as Sherlock tapped something into his computer.

"He's in Washington, isn't he?" John asked as he moved over to where Sherlock was typing. Looking over his shoulder he saw that he was responding to Rose's last comment on John's blog.

"Not him, his children," Lestrade said. The man looked very upset, and seemed hurt that Sherlock and John weren't giving him their undivided attention.

Sherlock quickly did a search for a verse. He selected one from Luke because it was simple. ' _Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him.'_ He was asking her to forgive him, then in the body of the text he merely said 'late a case.'

_Username: 17Luke3_

_Look, Sherlock Holmes is the only man doing this kind of thing. Anyone might be able to do it, but he's the only one actually DOING it. Talk to anyone you want, he's the one they'd call if they needed a detective. Everyone can see it, if you just look. And he's really successful! Can't you just give the man a break? Also, he's obviously working really hard. See how often he's in the paper! Everyone can respect that, right?_

After Sherlock hit 'send' he returned his full attention to Lestrade. He wanted this case solved as quickly as possible. He had only the one opportunity to see Rose and he would not have it jeopardized by a kidnapper.

"Max and Claudette, aged seven and nine," Lestrade continued, showing John the information on the children. "They're at Subordates."

"Posh boarding place down in Surrey," Donovan explained.

"School broke up, all the other boarders went home. Just a few kids remained, including those two," Lestrade continued.

"The kids have vanished," Donovan said with finality.

"The ambassador's asked for you personally," Lestrade said, turning to Sherlock.

"The 'Reichenbach hero,'" Donovan said sceptically as Sherlock rose to get his coat and brushed past her.

Sherlock did not answer as he continued toward the stairs. He did not care to waste his time or the children's time or Rose's time.

"Isn't it great to be working with a celebrity?" Sherlock heard Lestrade ask from the sitting room as he moved to follow Sherlock down the stairs.

~?~?~?~?~

Sherlock had chosen to take the Detective Inspector's vehicle rather than a separate one to conserve time. He knew that kidnappers rarely kept a child that they wanted to keep alive for longer than 24 hours. He also knew that he intended to be at the Tyler estate between five and seven hours from now, so that was how long he had to solve this case.

Sherlock, John, Sally and Greg hopped out of the car once it was parked in front of the large manor house that had been converted into a boarding school. Sherlock could see the woman who was being questioned and coddled by the police.

"That's Ms. Mckenzie, house mistress," Lestrade explained. "Go easy on her."

He approached her. His first instinct was to shout at her, perhaps scare her a bit to get her to talk to him without delay. Somewhere in his mind, however he could hear Rose's voice ' _if this is how you talk to witnesses, I don't know how you ever get anyone to talk to you_ ,' and he reevaluated his methods.

"Ms. Mckenzie you are in charge of pupil welfare?" he asked of the woman who was huddled in a blanket, sitting on the hood of a police vehicle. In Sherlock's head he berated her for leaving the place wide open last night, but he held his tongue.

"Y-y-yes," she said, stammering and shaking.

"Time is of the essence," Sherlock said, trying to keep his impatience tamped down. "If you could answer as quickly as possible, it would be an asset. Was this place closed up as it should have been last night, did you check?"

"All the doors and windows were properly bolted," the woman said, wide eyes on Sherlock. "No one, not even me went into their room last night. You have to believe me," she pleaded.

"I do," Sherlock said. He would never have John's bedside manner, but he had not panicked the woman, which was better than Lestrade or Donovan had expected, going from their stunned faces.

"Please show me to the rooms in question," Sherlock said to the PC at the entrance to the school. John was at his elbow in a moment.

"That was... quite well-handled with the matron," John commented, sounding surprised.

"I've been getting compassion lessons from the master," Sherlock said, glancing back and meeting John's eyes.

John had not yet been able to tell Sherlock that Rose hadn't been caught by Mycroft's all-seeing eyes since she'd entered town two days prior. He feared for his friend's concentration. He had a thought that Sherlock would abandon this search for children to ascertain Rose's safety, and that would not please their friend. John kept mum for the moment. Once Sherlock had uncovered these children, they could start looking for Rose.

~?~?~?~?~

John glanced over at Sherlock's tense jaw and unmoving outline. They were in a cab on the way to Molly's laboratory and the man beside him had been quiet and tense for far too long. Even baiting Anderson had, apparently, held no appeal. He had hardly cracked a smile when he'd insulted the other man at the crime scene. John had asked Sherlock if he was all right, but the detective had only informed him that there were missing children and he needed to focus.

"So how did they get past the CCTV if all the doors were locked?" John was hoping to get Sherlock talking again. This taciturn streak was unlike his friend during a case, though he could be quite silent when he was off a case for a length of time.

"He walked in when they weren't locked."

"A stranger can't just walk into a school like that."

"Anyone can walk in anywhere if they pick the right moment. Yesterday? End of term? With parents milling around, chauffeurs, staff? What's one more stranger among that lot? He was waiting for them. All he had to do was find a place to hide."

They arrived at St. Bart's moments later, which was fortunate. John was uncomfortable with the tension that seemed to come off the man beside him in waves.

The two men entered the hospital together, moving through the halls in silent tandem. As they entered a hallway on the way to the morgue, they ran into Molly as she was leaving.

"Molly," Sherlock said by way of a greeting.

"Oh... hello," she said, glancing at the pair of them. "I'm just going out."

"No you aren't," Sherlock said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders to steer her back into the laboratory.

"I've got a lunch date," she protested.

"And I've a dinner date, but I fear we may both have to reschedule if this doesn't go fast enough. You're having lunch with me." Sherlock dug into his pockets to withdraw two bags of crisps.

"What?" Molly asked.

"I need your help," Sherlock said, continuing down the hall. "It's one of your old boyfriends, we're trying to track him down. He's been a bit naughty."

"It's Moriarty?" John asked.

"Of course it's Moriarty," Sherlock said, frowning at John. "Didn't I say that in the car?"

"You didn't say anything in the car."

"Oh..." Sherlock looked a bit chagrined. "I intended to. Sorry old man," he said and patted John on his good shoulder.

"Jim actually wasn't even my boyfriend," Molly protested. Both men turned to her in surprise. "We went out three times. I ended it."

"Yes, and then he stole the crown jewels, broke into the Bank of England, and organized a prison break at Pentonville. Clearly you're enough of a catch that breaking up with a man will lead him to a life of unspeakable crime. For the sake of law and order, I suggest you avoid attempting another relationship in the short-term, Molly."

Both John and Molly looked after Sherlock in shock as he continued on to the lab.

"Well..." John said slowly, eyes on Sherlock's retreating form. "I think he actually could have been much worse."

"Could he?" Molly asked. "Worse than that?"

"Honestly, yeah, I think he could have," John said, resignedly.

The two of them followed after Sherlock because they'd known from the beginning that they would. Like it or not.

~?~?~?~?~

Four hours they ran tests on the oil from the kidnapper's footprints that Sherlock had obtained. Four hours of distilling, examining and testing.

"Aconite," Molly said after concluding one test.

"Thank you, John," Sherlock said, not looking up from his microscope.

"Molly," she corrected

"Sorry," he murmured, still not looking up.

Sherlock wrote 'chalk' on his list.

Another analysis showed traces of asphalt.

A third had brick dust.

Another had vegetation, though they did not have time to decide exactly what type.

"I.O.U.," Sherlock murmured to himself, continuing to examine a microscope slide. He looked over at Molly's most recent analysis. "And this raw molecule," he said, shifting closer to her as he looked. He sighed heavily. "What are you?"

"What did you mean, I.O.U.?" Molly asked. "You said I.O.U. You were muttering it while you were working."

"Nothing," Sherlock said sharply. He did not wish to explain this to her, it would take far too long. "Mental note."

"Is Rose all right?"

"Beg pardon?" Sherlock said, glancing up at her.

"Only, I know she's out of town. And you're... different when she's around. Do you know that?"

"Molly, Rose and I aren't..."

"No, I know you're not," Molly interrupted. "I never really thought you were. But... well... she's good for you, Rose is." Molly hesitated a moment. "It's just... you look a bit like my dad. He's dead... no, sorry."

Sherlock sighed. For some reason, he thought Rose had set Molly straight about this ages ago. It wasn't something he could get into now, however, as his relationship with Rose was over as far as anyone but Rose, John, Mrs. Hudson and himself were concerned.

"Molly, please don't feel the need to make conversation. It's really not your area," he said dismissively.

Molly ignored this and continued. "When he was dying, he was always cheerful. He was lovely except when he thought no one could see." She hesitated then, looking at Sherlock's profile as he continued to examine his slide through the microscope. "I saw him once. He looked sad."

"Molly..." Sherlock said, warningly. He did not want to get into this with her.

"You look sad when she's gone, when you think John can't see you."

Sherlock's eyes moved from the microscope up to where John was looking through the police file on the other side of the room. He was worried about John, who Moriarty had threatened once before, but the man was under his eyes at the current moment, and could not be touched. He was more worried about Rose who had been on her own for over a month. Not that he didn't think she could take care of herself, but he wanted proof. He wanted to feel her strong heartbeat against his own chest and her breaths against his neck as he held her close.

Sherlock shook his head to clear these un-helpful thoughts.

"Are you okay?" Molly asked, causing him to look at her again. "And don't just say that you are, because I know what that means, looking sad when you think no one else can see you."

Sherlock looked at Molly for a very long moment. She had begun to shift uncomfortably under his gaze when he finally spoke. "I am worried, Molly. I am worried about John and..." he could not say Rose, "and you because the last time I faced Moriarty, he threatened everyone that counted to me."

"I don't count..." Molly said.

"Molly," Sherlock cut her off with a sharp look. "John is here, and while I can keep an eye on him, I know that he is safe, and you are here and I know that I can keep you safe, but... there are people that are not here, that I cannot keep an eye on to know that they are safe, so I am worried. Moriarty is not to be underestimated. I must finish this part of the case as quickly as possible so that I can catch him and continue to ensure the safety of the people that matter, do you understand?"

Molly looked at him for a long moment. "Not sad then, just worried."

Sherlock gave her a half-smile that he did not really feel, but seemed to lessen her tension. "Just worried," he agreed. It wasn't quite true. He was terrified on behalf of John and Rose. He had a feeling that Molly was in no danger- she was a friend, but not someone that Moriarty would seek out. Not like John. Not like Rose.

"All right then. I'm going to go get something from the vending machines, do you want anything?"

"Coffee, two sugars, if you're going anyway."

Molly nodded. "John, anything from the machines?" she asked of the other man who shook his head. "Right then," she said, and left.

"Sherlock?" John said, looking at a specific picture from the file.

"Hmm?"

"This envelope was in her trunk," John said, holding up the picture of the envelope that had contained the copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales from the girl's trunk. "There's another one."

"What?" Sherlock asked, frowning, attention fully drawn away from his microscope for the first time in hours.

"On our doorstep," John said, going to his coat to dig in the pocket. "Found it today," he continued, pulling the crumpled item out and looking it over. "Yes, look at that," he brought the item over to show Sherlock. "Look at that. Exactly the same seal."

Sherlock took the photograph and the envelope and compared the old-fashioned wax seals. Magpies, Sherlock noted. A peculiar choice. They were also not, in fact, sealed with the wax- it was merely an adornment. Perhaps a part of the message, though, without a trip through his mind palace, Sherlock could not think of what magpies might mean.

Sherlock put his fingers into the envelope that John had given him and withdrew... breadcrumbs?

"Breadcrumbs."

"Uh-huh. It was there when I got back."

"Little trace of breadcrumbs. Hardback copy of fairy tales."

John recognized the short sentences and clipped voice that indicated that Sherlock was putting things together.

"Two children led into the forest by a wicked father, follow a little trail of breadcrumbs."

"That's _Hansel and Gretel_ ," John supplied. "What sort of kidnapper leaves clues?"

"The sort that likes to boast," Sherlock said, anger and disgust tinging his voice now. He glanced over at John to be sure he understood the implication. Moriarty had always taken the time to boast, and still he was not caught. "The sort that thinks it's all a game. He sat in our flat, and he said these exact words to me: 'every fairy tale needs a good, old-fashioned villain.'"

The two men stood in silence for a moment considering the monstrosity of the situation. A man who would manufacture his own fairy tale to set himself as the villain, putting two children's lives at risk all to get at Sherlock.

Sherlock was the first to return to the task at hand. "Now, the fifth substance. It's part of the tale. The witch's house!" he cried suddenly.

"What?"

"The glycerin molecule," he said, his eyes tracking the way they always did when he searched his mental files for information. "PGPR," he cried when he found the information he was looking for, "it's used in making chocolate."

Sherlock was up, gathering his coat and scarf in a moment. John followed him as he raced from the room. They ran into Molly on their way out and Sherlock plucked the cup of coffee from her hand.

"We've figured it out, we're off to the police," he said as he sped past her. When he reached the door, he stopped and turned back to her. "Keep safe," he said quietly, and then he was away, John on his heels.

~?~?~?~?~

Sally Donovan watched Sherlock Holmes and John Watson enter the station room with Lestrade at their side. _The Freak, The Follower, and The Fan,_ she thought to herself, though she rarely called Holmes by that name anymore (not since being told off for it by Tony Tyler) and she'd never named the doctor anywhere other than in her head and she wouldn't dare call her boss anything but 'sir' or his name. She saw that Holmes was holding a copy of the fax that had arrived an hour ago, a hand-written note that said " _hurry up, they're dying_." Sally had already put the team's best graphologists on the handwriting analysis as well as the tech team to trace the origin of the fax. She didn't really expect anything to come of it, but she had to cover her bases.

Holmes was telling Lestrade that they needed to find an abandoned sweet factory. Something about asphalt, brick dust, chalk and vegetation. Sally galvanized the research team and then stood back to allow them to work. She continued to listen to Holmes and Lestrade talk while she thought.

 _Linseed Oil, and he followed the trail by smell like a bloodhound_ , was the thought that had been niggling in the back of her mind for hours now. _No one should be able to do that_.

Sally had long warned Lestrade that the team's dependence on Holmes would cause them problems. There was something about this case that sat uneasily with her, and she could feel a sense of impending doom about it.

What would the android know about a kid watching through the window of his dormitory as people pass by? Would a kid even do that? Sally wasn't terribly fond of children, and she had a hard time imagining Holmes dealing with them well either. It just seemed like such an odd deduction for him to make.

Then there was the package in the girl's trunk with the magpie in sealing wax. Ever since she was a child Sally had been wary of those birds. Her grandmother had often recited a poem to her about them.

_One for sorrow,_

_Two for joy;_

_Three for a girl,_

_Four for boy;_

_Five for silver,_

_Six for gold,_

_Seven for a secret_

_Not to be told;_

_Eight for heaven,_

_Nine for hell;_

_And ten for the devil's own self!_

The slightly haunting lines and the dark undertones had always made Sally quite nervous. There was one magpie now, and Sally had an irrational fear of what sorrow might come.

When Holmes found the warehouse on his cell phone through use of a network of homeless people, the team she had put on the search had barely started. Sally knew that Lestrade would say that it was just what Holmes did, but she couldn't quite shake the feeling that everything was happening _too fast_. He was coming to the answers _too easily_.

When they arrived at the warehouse to which Holmes directed them, Sally followed Holmes, Watson and Lestrade. She wanted to keep an eye on the detective to help silence the niggling voice in the back of her mind. When he found the sweet wrappers and identified mercury, the insistent voice in her head said again that it was all too easy. When he commented about the neatness of the scheme she could hear the pleasure in his voice and it nearly made her sick.

_One for sorrow,_

_Two for joy._

Sally abandoned the men. Really, she wasn't even sure that Holmes was human sometimes. She found Anderson and together the two of them finally found the children. The little boy was unconscious and the little girl was crying. When they tried to get her attention, told her that they were the police and were taking her somewhere safe, she said something garbled about her brother. Anderson identified her symptoms as mercury poisoning. The Freak was right again.

_Three for a girl,_

_Four for a boy._

Sally tried questioning the little girl when they got her back to the station. She was having a lot of trouble stringing a sentence together and she asked after her brother and her parents several times, but would not talk about her kidnapper. Lestrade tried when Sally gave up. He was good with kids and got a bit more out of her, but nothing really about the kidnapper. Just that he was a 'bad man.'

_Seven for a secret_

_Not to be told._

Then Holmes had stepped into the room and, catching sight of him, the little girl had screamed.

_And ten for the devil's own self!_

The suspicious whispers in the back of Sally's mind turned to shouts. The slight unsettled feeling in her gut turned to full nausea. A man who would mistreat children was a monster, and she stood looking at one.

When he ran away, he might as well have announced his guilt. Greg could try to laugh it off, but she would not.

She would make Greg see reason, and if not him, she would go over his head.

_The devil's own self._

~?~?~?~?~

"This is the story of Sir Boast-a-Lot."

_Who's afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?_

"Sir Boast-a-Lot was the bravest and cleverest knight at the Round Table. But soon the other knights began to grow tired of his stories about how brave he was and how many dragons he'd slain. And soon they began to wonder…"

_All the better to see you with._

"Are Sir Boast-a-Lot's stories even true? Oh no…"

_Little pig, little pig, let me come in._

"So one of the knights went to King Arthur and said, 'I don't believe Sir Boast-a-Lot's stories. He's just a big old liar who makes things up to make himself look good."

_All the better to eat you with._

"And then, even the king began to wonder. But that wasn't the end of Sir Boast-a-Lot's problem. No. That wasn't the final problem."

_I'm going to huff and puff and blow your house down._

"The end."

~?~?~?~?~

From the moment Mickey and Rose entered the outskirts of London on Sunday evening, she could feel a prickling on the back of her neck. An awareness of eyes on her at all time. She had no doubt that the eyes were real- she was not inclined to paranoia, and she could guess that Mycroft would be keeping an eye out for her (at Sherlock's request, no doubt) even if Sherlock was wrong about Moriarty's interest in her. She did not think he was.

Before they had left Cardiff, Rose and Dr. Stewart had put a perception filter on the key to the Baker Street flat since her TARDIS key was now in the hands of the scientists who were using it to tune the dimension cannon. She needed to move around the city without causing a fuss. The perception filter on her key wouldn't quite make her invisible, just easily overlooked. She had one that was a bit bigger, powered by a device that looked like an MP3 music player that would make her effectively invisible and could even be extended to cover as many as five people for a few minutes. For just herself, it would work for hours. It was a back-up plan that she carried with her, just in case. Like the extra inertial dampeners (the one she intended to give Sherlock was stuck to her key so that the perception filter would cover it- she wanted it as protected as possible) and the blaster that she had in her bag. Normally she wouldn't wander about London armed, but she was scared. Properly scared, for the first time in her life, to be in the city of her birth.

Rose shared none of these fears, thoughts, or secrets with Mickey. She knew that he would worry, and she wanted to spare him that. When she opened the door of her flat and found herself looking down the nose of a gun held by a man who was far more dangerous than the weapon in his hand, she regretted the decision not to open up to her best friend. He might have come to the flat with her if she had. But it would probably have just put him in danger.

Rose closed her front door behind herself. She hung her purse on the hook by the door, and dropped her keys into a bowl at the side of the entrance way that was intended for them. She set her rucksack down on the floor beside her. She never took her eyes off of the man with the gun before her.

"Are you planning on shooting me, or are you just going to stand there looking dramatic?" she asked, pleased with her ability to keep any emotion but sarcastic boredom from her voice. "You might as well be Sherlock Holmes. Drama Queens, the pair of you."

"Bad Wolf," the man said, by way of a greeting. "I've been longing to meet you."

Rose raised a single eyebrow, allowing herself to betray only that much surprise. "Is that what you took from Torchwood? My files? Heavens, there's much more interesting reading in our archives than that."

"You're cheeky. I like it."

"You're repulsive. I don't much like it, if you want the truth."

He smiled at her. It was an oddly intimate thing and it made Rose wish she could wash herself. "I made tea," he said, gesturing toward the kitchen with the gun that was still leveled at her.

"What is it with men breaking into my flat to make tea? I'll post on the internet where I buy the stuff if you'd like."

"Yours has a sedative."

"Well, that's at least a bit original. What are you using?"

"Why should it matter?"

"I usually prefer not to die, ta."

"I'm not interested in killing you, Bad Wolf."

"Says the man with a gun pointed at me."

"It's the sedative or a bullet, I don't deny that. I'd prefer you to choose the sedative, of course, else I'd have shot you already. It's so final, a bullet. So loud, so messy and so final. If you choose the tea, you might find a way to get away or defeat me."

"But someone's bound to hear it fire off, and you might very well get caught."

"But you'll be dead and not around to enjoy my getting caught."

Rose leaned casually against the wall, crossed one booted foot over the other and crossed her leather-clad arms over her chest, presenting her first Doctor's deceptively casual pose to her enemy. "What I don't understand is this, Jim Moriarty," Rose drawled. She stopped short of sliding her accent north to sound more like her Doctor, but she allowed a few of his verbal cadences to surface. "You don't do this. Sherlock's told me lots about you and you... just... don't. You send someone else to hold guns and threaten people. Your hands stay clean."

"But you, Rose Tyler, are worth it."

Rose blinked. To have this man hold a gun on her and very nearly repeat the words that Captain Jack said to her before he died was... unsettling.

"So will it be the bullet?"

"You never did tell me what kind of sedative it is."

"Rohypnol."

"At least you didn't ruin the tea with something that has a taste. Are you going to hold that gun for the entire half hour it'll take to take effect?"

"I was hoping you might offer me a seat and a cuppa for myself. Sherlock did."

"Sherlock likes the drama of all of this much better than I do," she said with a sarcastic half smile. "You two... made for each other, you are. But you can continue to stand. I prefer not to break bread with people who want me dead."

"If I wanted you dead, you'd be dead."

"Holding a gun on me," Rose sing-songed as she walked into her kitchen. Her already poured cup sat at one of the seats and her entire tea-service was carefully arranged on a tray in the center of the table. She picked up the cup and breathed the aroma of the still-warm tea. "If you're going to put drugs in it, you should be polite enough to use the inexpensive stuff," she mused as she added milk to her cup and took a small sip.

She looked up at the man with the gun again. "So tell me, James Moriarty, what are you doing here? Seems that kidnapping me quietly from my home is, again, a bit staid for you. Is Sherlock going to have to find me? You'll have plenty of time to hide me, he isn't expecting me until Tuesday."

"You think I don't know that? How stupid are the pair of you? Did you really think I wouldn't understand those cute little codes?"

"Ah, well," Rose smiled a bit shyly and took another sip of her drink, "the communication on the blog was not really my idea. And since I was the one who had to come up with a code, it ended up being just a touch simplistic. My fault, of course. I'm sure if Sherlock were communicating with you, it would have been far more impressive. You might never have broken that code," she concluded with a teasing smile.

"Finish your tea," he said softly, taking a step forward and leveling the gun at her head.

"You could at least say 'please,'" Rose grumbled, betraying no fear. She did pick up her tea cup to empty it, however. "There you go," she said, sweetly. "Sedative swallowed." She poured herself another cup of tea and looked at him again. "Now, I was asking you a question. You were going to monologue your entire plan to me, like the villain in any good fairy tale."

"You can talk," he said with a sneer. "Where does the name Bad Wolf come from? That's not in your file."

"It's a name I created for myself once," she said with a smile. "So tell me, is Sherlock going to have to come looking for me only to find me dead?" She said it as though dying were the least of her concerns. As though it would be boring.

"Oh no, Bad Wolf. You're going to gobble Sherlock right up and solve his Final Problem."


	13. Huff and Puff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **More of the alternate perspectives.**
> 
>  
> 
> **If any of you are on Teaspoon (and if you're not and you dig Doctor Who fanfic, I definitely suggest an account, it's pretty rad) the magnificent Layla Crimson is writing a RoseLock fic called Finding Color. If you need help finding it, message or comment and I'll get you there. Go and flood her with positive feedback and awesome reviews, 'cause the RoseLock shippers have to stick together, yeah?**
> 
>  
> 
> **Enjoy this chapter! We're getting into my favorite parts of this fic!**

Sally Donovan leaned against the door of 221 Baker Street as Lestrade went inside to talk to Holmes. He was still skeptical that the man had anything to do with it- still convinced that he was a good man, not a psychopath that had snapped. Sally was quite convinced of the opposite. The little girl's screams still echoed in her ears, and the sight of the man who had been shot down as he shook Holmes' hand was fresh in her mind.

Sherlock Holmes was a psychopath who got his jollies from crime. When the crimes hadn't been interesting enough, he'd created his own.

Sally picked up her phone and made a call to Lestrade's boss. She knew Holmes wouldn't come with them unless they forced him to, and it would take the Chief Superintendent to convince Lestrade. She was off the phone by the time her boss was back at the car.

"Sherlock says it's Moriarty," was his greeting.

"I don't really care what Sherlock says. If anyone else had walked into that room and had that little girl scream bloody murder at the sight of them, you'd be taking a really close look into their background. They wouldn't be sitting at home; they'd be in an interrogation room."

"Not without a warrant."

"So get a warrant," Sally said, looking him over. She could see on his face that he still wasn't there, but there was doubt in him. They climbed into the car and started in the direction of the station.

"Look," Sally said, rounding on her boss when he couldn't get away, "you know what he's like. What if he's using again?"

"He's been clean for ages," Lestrade said, uncomfortably.

"Has he been checked? When was the last time anyone did a bust at his place?"

Lestrade was silent, and Sally knew why. They hadn't checked on Sherlock in over a year trusting to John Watson's influence to keep the man safe.

"They're good for him, John and Rose," Lestrade finally said. "He's better than he was."

Sally rolled her eyes. She thought John was a fool to align himself with Sherlock Holmes, and the man was completely blind where his friend was concerned. She'd heard that the tabloids were correct and that Holmes and Rose Tyler were seeing each other, and she'd been told by people around the station that he was 'much better' since Rose had entered his life, but Sally had never met the woman and to her Sherlock seemed just as irascible, impossible, and insane as ever he had been.

They arrived at the station a few minutes later without any further conversation between them. As soon as they entered the building, they were summoned to the Superintendent's office along with Anderson. When the superintendent asked whether they had used Sherlock on any "proper" cases, all three of them shifted uncomfortably. They all knew how many cases would still be open without Holmes' intervention (even if he'd been an arse about it at the time), but Anderson spoke up to answer the question honestly when Lestrade hedged.

"A novice detective given access to all sorts of classified information?" he had asked. "And now he's a suspect in a case? You're a bloody idiot, Lestrade. Now go fetch him in right now! Do it!"

The three of them left. Lestrade was angry with them, but Anderson brought up a good point, "what if he's done this to us every time?" It was too grim a possibility to ignore.

When they made it back to Baker Street, John and Mrs. Hudson tried to stop them at the door by asking for a warrant or insisting that they wait and be announced. When they made it upstairs, Holmes was already wearing his coat and scarf, waiting patiently to be cuffed. He stood silent while Lestrade told him his crimes and was shoved out the door. Lestrade even shut Watson down when he tried to interrupt, and Sally felt oddly proud of him.

"You done?" Watson asked her, looking angry.

"Well, I said it. First time we met," she said, certain that she was right.

"Don't bother," he snapped.

"Solving crimes won't be enough. One day he'll cross the line. Now ask yourself, what sort of man would kidnap those kids just so he can impress us all by finding them?"

While Mrs. Hudson and Watson glared at her, the Superintendent wandered into the room. He called Holmes a weirdo and a vigilante, and Watson, without provocation, punched the man in the face. Sally cuffed him as well and led him down the steps after the bleeding Chief to the car next to Sherlock Holmes. The two were cuffed together.

Sally couldn't really say she was terribly surprised when Holmes took a gun and, using Watson as a hostage, escaped. Lestrade should have been watching them more carefully. Sherlock Holmes was a madman, and not to be trusted.

~?~?~?~?~

"Too late to go on record?"

Kitty gasped as she found Sherlock Holmes and John Watson sitting, handcuffed to one-another, on her couch when she walked in. She knew that he would have noticed, but she wrapped dignity around herself like a cloak and mustered up her haughtiest voice to say, "haven't you seen the papers? Someone already has."

"Mmm," he intoned, digging into a pocket and coming out with what appeared to be a roll of tools.

"You've had your lock picks on you this entire time?" John asked.

"Of course," Sherlock said, as though this should have been obvious.

"You can pick handcuff locks in 35 seconds, you've timed yourself, and you had us running hand-in-hand?"

Sherlock shook his head as he began working with the cuff on his own wrist. "There wasn't much light, we were running from the police, and I don't see what the problem is. Rose does it all the time."

Kitty raised her eyebrows but remained silent.

"I don't want to even contemplate what you and Rose get up to with handcuffs," John said grumpily.

Sherlock looked uncomprehendingly at John for a moment. "Wha-" he began before his face cleared and he gave John an impatient look and returned his attention to the handcuffs. "Mind out of the gutter, John," he scolded. "She prefers to run hand-in-hand."

Kitty and John both rolled their eyes, but Sherlock ignored it.

"Congratulations," he said, glancing at Kitty, "the truth about Sherlock Holmes." He released the cuff and was up without removing John's. "The scoop that everyone wanted and you got it. Bravo," he breathed sarcastically.

"I gave you the opportunity," she said, unafraid. "I wanted to be on your side, remember? You turned me down." Rose had turned her down first. Really, she'd have liked to work with the woman as sex would have sold even better than the intrigue, but Kitty was happy with what she'd gotten from Richard.

"And then someone turns up and spills all the beans, how utterly convenient. Who is Brook?"

Kitty shook her head. He knew Richard. She wasn't going to admit to a damn thing to this man.

"Oh come on, Kitty, no one trusts the voice at the end of a telephone. There are all those furtive little meetings in cafes, those sessions in the motel room where you gabble into your Dictaphone."

As much as she despised the man, the timbre of his voice giving a sexually illicit overtone to the day-to-day of journalism sent a shiver up Kitty's spine. Maybe she would have liked to have him as her informant after all. Those hotel rooms could have been quite cozy. Rich wasn't like that- too afraid and probably gay.

"How do you know that you can trust him?" Sherlock continued. "Man turns up with the Holy Grail in his pocket. What were his credentials?"

Kitty heard the door before Sherlock did. Her eyes moved off of his face to the space behind him and watched the knob turning. She knew who was about to come through that door, and Sherlock would be forced to face his sins.

"Darlin' they didn't have any ground coffee, so I just got whole bean..."

Kitty stood as she watched the three men recognize one-another. Poor Rich looked so frightened. He dropped the bag of groceries (he'd been so sweet to offer to get them) and backed himself nearly into a corner in fright. Sherlock's back was to Kitty, but John Watson's face went white and his eyes went wide.

"You said that they wouldn't find me here. You said that I'd be safe here."

"You are safe, Richard," Kitty soothed. "I'm a witness. They wouldn't harm you in front of witnesses."

John Watson yelled. John Watson accused. Kitty laughed a bit at his naiveté.

"There is no Moriarty. There never has been," she glanced at Sherlock, giving him the opportunity to explain, but he was looking at the proof of his lies in shock. "Look him up," Kitty continued. "Rich Brook, an actor Sherlock Holmes _hired_ to be Moriarty."

Rich continued to hold his hands up in front of him. Poor thing, Kitty thought, to be so afraid. Sherlock just stood in dumbfounded shock, not speaking, not moving, not taking his eyes from his accuser.

Rich pleaded with John who yelled and accused again, even as Rich apologized for the things Sherlock had hired him to do to the other man. Still John did not believe. Kitty knew a thing or two about loyalty, and she knew that it was a commodity. If John Watson would stand up for Sherlock Holmes in the face of overwhelming evidence of his artifice, he must be receiving something in compensation. Maybe the two _were_ lovers, she thought to herself. Rose Tyler could easily be a cover.

John turned to Sherlock for an explanation, but before the man could lie to his friend further, Kitty pulled out her copy of her article to give to him.

"I'll be doing the explaining, in print," she said, handing it over to him. "It's all here, the inclusive proof." Kitty turned to Sherlock to lay the accusations at his feet. "You invented James Moriarty, your nemesis."

"Invented him?" John interrupted.

"Mm-mm," she said, turning to glance at John before returning her attention to Sherlock. "Invented all the crimes actually. And to cap it all, you made up a master villain."

She wanted to hear him say it. Wanted him to admit it. Sherlock, however, remained silent. Stunned.

John still would not believe. Kitty threw the accusation of paying Rich to take the fall as Moriarty, rigging the jury and paying for all of it into Sherlock's face, and still he remained silent, staring open-mouthed at Rich. Even when faced with Rich's portfolio, he said nothing, though Kitty could see John wavering slightly.

Kitty noted that Sherlock suddenly looked less tense. Less afraid. As he relaxed a bit, his limbs becoming looser, Rich started to talk directly to him, begging and imploring him to tell John and Kitty the truth from his own mouth.

Sherlock took a step toward Rich and the smaller man panicked. Kitty stepped forward to stand between the men. She would not allow Sherlock to hurt her friend.

"Where is Rose Tyler?" Sherlock's voice was low and dangerous. "You have her somewhere and I will have her back."

"I've been staying here," Rich stammered. "Kitty will tell you. She's not here. You're completely mad."

Sherlock pushed Kitty aside and Rich ran, calling for her help. Loyalty was a commodity, and Rich hadn't quite paid enough for Kitty's to have her step in front of Sherlock again, so he was forced to run from the madman in the blue coat. When he escaped through the window of Kitty's bathroom, Sherlock returned to the main part of the flat and Kitty decided to get in her last word.

"Do you know what, Sherlock Holmes? I look at you now and I can read you, and you repel me," she said with a satisfied smile.

He hesitated for half a moment, looking her over, but seemed to decide against saying anything to her. He and John left her behind with her wide, smug smile.

~?~?~?~?~

Mycroft was on his way out of his club when he found John Watson sitting in the waiting room, reading a sheaf of papers.

"She has really done her homework, Miss Riley," the younger man said, by way of a greeting. "It's things that only someone close to Sherlock could know."

Riley, Mycroft thought. Kitty Riley, the one doing the expose on Sherlock. The one who apparently knew everything about him. John was holding an advance copy of her article, and if John recognized the information before him, there were very few people from whom she could have her information. There was Sherlock himself, Mycroft, their parents, the man who sat before him, Rose Tyler, or one other. Mycroft was certain of his family and John Watson, suspicious of Rose Tyler and the last was his greatest fear.

"Have you seen your brother's address book lately? Three names. Yours, mine, and Rose's, and Moriarty didn't get this stuff from me."

"You accuse me before Miss Tyler? I am wounded, John. You've known me longer."

"Are you telling me that it wasn't you? Did Moriarty get this from Rose? He's Kitty's informant you know."

Mycroft considered saying yes. He considered passing his failure off on the woman that he so disliked. Perhaps John would even find a way to get her away from Sherlock if he did, but Mycroft had a feeling that, if Sherlock were to find out, his brother's wrath would be terrible. And Sherlock was sure to find out.

"John..."

"Thought so," the man interrupted. "So how did it work then, your relationship? You go out for coffee now and then, eh? You and Jim? Your own brother, and you blabbed about his entire life to this maniac?"

"I never intend- I never dreamt-"

"This is what you were trying to tell me, isn't it? Watch his back because I've made a mistake."

Mycroft looked for a long, quiet moment at the man before him. It had been a mistake, giving Sherlock's secrets to a man who would use them to harm Mycroft's brother. He wondered if he had been so certain that Sherlock's downfall would come at the hands of Rose Tyler that he had become complacent and foolish.

"How'd you meet him?" John asked finally.

"People like him, we know about them. We watch them." Except Rose Tyler, he thought. They didn't know about her. Either she was better than Moriarty or...

The other possibility was that she was exactly as kind, gentle, and loving as she appeared. Having secrets did not necessarily make her the villain in this story. Loath though he was to admit it, Mycroft thought that, perhaps, Sherlock could use another person who loved him. He was better since John Watson had joined his life- he did not use drugs, he was quitting smoking, and he was less inclined to destruction. How much better still was he since Rose Tyler? Even his bad nights were tapering off, and those that he had were less all-encompassing.

"But James Moriarty, the most dangerous criminal mind the world has ever seen, and in his pocket, the ultimate weapon, a key code. A few lines of computer code that can unlock any door."

"And you abducted him to try and find the key code?"

"Interrogated him for weeks."

"And?"

"He wouldn't play along. He just sat there staring into the darkness."

The methods that Mycroft and his men had used were cruel, just short of torturous, but the man had not broken as other men did.

"The only thing that made him open up..." Mycroft continued. "I could get him to talk just a little."

"But in return you had to offer him Sherlock's life story." John's voice was flat, his eyes accusing.

Mycroft felt his jaw tense. This man was far more protective of his brother than he had been. A braver man than he was. A better one- but good men did not work in positions like Mycroft's.

"So it's one big lie: Sherlock's a fraud," John continued. "But people will swallow it because the rest of it's true." John leaned forward with his accusations, angry. "Moriarty wanted Sherlock destroyed, right? And you have given him perfect ammunition." He smiled in a cold, angry way, and then got up to leave.

"John..." Mycroft had little to say, little to do but ask for forgiveness, though there was one thing that he could say to lessen his sins. "I did not tell Moriarty anything about Rose Tyler."

The younger man turned back, eyes still cold. "So you didn't serve Sherlock's heart up to the man on a plate. You gave him everything else. Did you think that Moriarty couldn't figure that one bit out? She's missing, you know. We tried her flat and no one's been there in days. He has her and if something's happened to her… if he's laid so much as a _finger_ on her… I think it might kill Sherlock."

"I'm sorry."

"Oh, well," John gave a sarcastic laugh.

"Tell him, would you?"

~?~?~?~?~

Molly shut off the lights in her office, the conference room and was about to do the same in the lab when she was faced with Sherlock Holmes, sitting on his usual stool, texting furiously.

"Sherlock?" Molly said, confused.

He looked up from his phone and Molly saw something in those starry silver eyes that she'd never seen there before: fear. The man before her was shaking- or would be if he weren't so tense.

"Molly, do you trust me?" His voice was low and hoarse and it made Molly afraid just hearing it.

"Of course I trust you."

"But if someone had evidence… what looked like incontrovertible evidence that everything you believe of me… everything I believe of me… everything I've ever told you is a lie… the manifestation of madness…"

He seemed to be having a hard time stringing a sentence together, and it worried Molly. "Sherlock," she said, quietly, hoping to calm him, "what do you need?"

Suddenly he was in front of her, in her space, closer than he had been to her in months. Those fathomless eyes held hers and she felt herself drowning in their depths.

"Would you believe the evidence or would you believe me?" he asked throatily.

Molly knew what she _should_ say. She was a scientist, at the end of the day. Evidence was what she lived on. But this was Sherlock, and he could ask anything of her and she would give it to him. And he was in her space, nearly-but-not-quite touching her. There was only one answer she could possibly give.

"Of course I'd believe you, Sherlock."

Some of the tension seemed to drain out of him. "Thank you," he breathed.

Molly wondered if this was the moment. Would he finally kiss her now? But no, he moved away from her, back to his lab stool.

"I need a place to stay," he said, his voice now steady. "The police are looking for me, can't go back to Baker Street."

"Do you," Molly paused and licked her lips. His mood swings were giving her vertigo. "Do you want to stay at my place?"

"Harboring a known fugitive at your flat could get you arrested. I can't have that. May I stay here?"

"Of course," she said quietly. "Sherlock, what's wrong?"

"I am afraid, Molly," he said slowly, "that I may have to die."

Molly felt her eyebrows shoot up in shock. Rose had said the same thing last week over the phone- that Sherlock might have to die. She'd told Molly what should be done, and had said that she would try to contact her again when she was more certain. Molly had not heard from her since, but here was Sherlock, talking about dying. He even used the same words 'have to die.' Not 'going to die' but 'have to die.'

"Do you want me to stay here?" she asked. Rose hadn't told her to stick close, but Molly didn't want to miss the moment that she would need to help.

"John is on his way."

It wasn't an answer to her question, so Molly chose to interpret it as him not minding her presence. She went to get the pair of them coffee, and when John showed up around 1 AM she got him a coffee as well.

Throughout the night, Molly continued to bring Sherlock and John coffee though neither of them seemed to notice that every time they picked up their cups, the substance inside was warm and those cups never went dry. She was used to that, even from John, when the cases got complicated.

Molly sat to the side as the two men argued. They talked until nearly dawn. At first it was about Mycroft (Molly came to understand that this was Sherlock's brother's first name) and how he had given Jim a lot of information about Sherlock that was being published in the morning papers. Then they had argued for hours about where Rose Tyler might be, and whether Jim would kill her. Then it was something about a code at their flat.

Molly didn't like to think of the sweet boy she had gone out with as a thief and potential murderer. He'd been interested in her. He'd let her talk about her job and her frustrations with Sherlock. He'd never pressured her for sex, though she had eventually gone to bed with him. He'd been funny and nice and a bit clumsy, and then Sherlock had said he was gay and he'd confessed to her that he was right, and she'd felt terrible. Even now, the thought filled her with shame.

Around 5 AM, the two men had circled back around to Jim's code. John had been suggesting further places in their flat that it might be hidden when Sherlock had suddenly tensed. Molly noticed, though John didn't. John walked away, pacing on the other side of the room and Sherlock turned himself toward the wall and pulled out his cell phone. He'd glanced at John as he'd put the phone back into his coat pocket, but, as ever, he had not noticed Molly at all.

For a half hour after that, the two men lapsed into silent thought. Molly brought both of them more coffee and, for the first time all night, received a 'thank you' from each of them. She had given them tight smiles and continued back to her office to start the day after her sleepless night.

She heard the tinny sound of John's phone at around 7 and stepped into the door of her office to witness what was happening.

John came to Sherlock's side after hanging up. "It's Mrs. Hudson, Sherlock. She's been hurt. We have to go check on her."

"I can't, John," Sherlock said, quietly.

"What do you mean, you can't? She's hurt!"

"John, I'm a wanted criminal. If I go back to Baker Street, they will arrest me. You go." Sherlock met his best friend's ice-blue eyes with his own star-spangled silver ones. "Make sure she's all right. Please?"

John had given Sherlock a long look then. "Yeah, all right," he said. "I'll make sure she's okay." With that he had gathered his coat to leave.

When he reached the door, however, he was arrested by Sherlock's voice.

"Thank you, John," the detective said.

Molly, who knew that Sherlock thought he would die soon could tell that he was talking about more than just checking on their landlady. John didn't know that, however, and merely said, "yeah, it's fine. As soon as you're off the hook, you'll visit her, yeah?"

"Of course. Just as soon as I am able," Sherlock said softly.

As soon as John was gone, Sherlock put on his scarf, shrugged into his coat and flipped his collar up, as ever he did. He slipped out of the room and toward the stairs with the roof access. Molly watched him go unobserved.

"The front of the hospital," Rose had told her. Molly left to take up her position.

~?~?~?~?~

His text tone came. He checked the screen and smiled.

_Come and play. Bart's Hospital rooftop._

_-SH_

_PS. You have something of mine I want back. I have something to trade._

He turned his smile to the woman sitting straight-backed and proud, handcuffed to a chair across the room from him.

"Come along, my dear. You're going to huff and puff and blow Sherlock's world away."


	14. The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There... might should be a tissue-warning on this chapter. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Moriarty had situated himself on the edge of the roof with his phone playing the song that was his ringtone. Staying Alive by the BeeGees, Sherlock's mind supplied, even as his eyes did a quick scan of the surrounding area to find Rose.

"Well, here we are at last," Moriarty said by way of a greeting.

"Where is she?" he asked, keeping his voice as calm as possible. She had to be here, but he did not see her.

"Just you and me, Sherlock. And our problem, the final problem. Staying alive! It's so boring, isn't it?" He shut off the music angrily. "It's just _staying_."

"I offered a trade," Sherlock said. His voice remained calm, but his heart skittered in his chest. He did not see Rose anywhere, and there simply weren't any places for her to hide.

"All my life, I've been searching for distractions," Moriarty said, ignoring Sherlock completely. "And you were the best distraction. And now I don't even have you because I've beaten you. And you know what? In the end it was easy." His face fell into what appeared to be true sorrow. "It was easy. And now I've got to go back to playing with the ordinary people. And it turns out that you're ordinary, just like all of them. Look at you! Here to save a girl. How cliché can you get?"

Sherlock stood silent. The man obviously had a speech to deliver and would step over every one of Sherlock's lines to be sure that it came out as he hoped.

"Oh well," Moriarty continued in a sing-song voice. He stood and approached Sherlock, remaining just over an arm's length away. "Did you almost start to wonder if I was real? Did I nearly get you?"

"Richard Brook," Sherlock stated. It was all he needed to say. The name had been the only thing keeping him from falling off the edge of madness- knowing that the universe did not throw up coincidences like that. Not for him.

"Nobody seems to get the joke," Moriarty said, nodding, "but you do."

"Of course," Sherlock said. Even in this moment he could not put aside all of his customary arrogance.

"Attaboy."

"Rich Brook in German is Reichenbach. The case that made my name."

"Just trying to have a little fun," Moriarty said with a grin. He continued to circle Sherlock and, as he got to where the detective had his hands clasped behind his back, he saw the beat that those fingers were tapping. "Good, you got that too."

"Beats like digits. Every beat is a one, every rest a zero. Binary code. That's why all those assassins tried to save my life. It was hidden on me, hidden inside my head. A few simple lines of computer code that can break into any system. That's what I have to trade, so where is your collateral?"

"No, no, no, no, no, this is too easy. This is too easy." Moriarty buried his face in his hands as though weeping. "There is no key, _Dufus_!" he shrieked in Sherlock's face. In a moment he was calm again. "Those digits are meaningless. They're utterly meaningless." He watched Sherlock for a moment as that man's face drained again of all colour. "Is that what you think? A couple of lines of computer code are gonna crash the world around our ears? I'm disappointed. I'm disappointed in you." He lowered his voice in a mockery of Sherlock's. "Ordinary Sherlock," he mumbled, lumbering about like an ape.

"But the rhythm," Sherlock objected.

"Partita number 1!" Moriarty cried. "Thank you, Johann Sebastian Bach!"

"Then how did you..."

"Then how did I break into the bank? To the Tower? To the prison? To Torchwood? Daylight robbery!" He was shouting now. Gesticulating and screaming his successes to the heavens. "All it takes is some willing participants. I knew you'd fall for it. That's your weakness. You always want everything to be clever." Moriarty was suddenly still and serious. "Now shall we finish the game? One final act. Glad you chose a tall building. Nice way to do it."

"Do it. Do what?" Sherlock's voice was just this side of panic. Then he stilled for a moment. "Yes, of course. My suicide."

"'Genius detective proved to be a fraud.' I read it in the paper so it must be true," Moriarty's voice was mocking. "I love newspapers," he said quietly, drawing Sherlock over to the edge to look down. "Fairy tales... and pretty grim ones too. But no, you're wrong again."

"What?"

"You're going to die, but you won't be doing the honours."

"You're going to-"

"No, not me either. Her." Moriarty glanced over at the corner of the roof, a place that could not possibly be overlooked, and yet apparently Sherlock had.

Standing across the building from them, clad in her blue leather jacket, golden hair blowing across her face in the wind stood Rose Tyler.

"Hello, Sherlock," she said softly, walking across the roof toward the two men. "I fear I stood you up for dinner last night. I got another offer at the last moment that was quite impossible to refuse."

"I'm sure I can find it in myself to forgive you," he answered, his voice going husky. "I'm afraid I missed the reservation as well."

"Oh aren't you two precious," Moriarty said with a sneer. "Now throw him off the roof, Bad Wolf."

"Why would she do that?" Sherlock asked. The question was directed at Moriarty, but his eyes never left Rose.

"Ah yes, her motivation," Moriarty said with a smile and withdrew a gun to level at her. "If she doesn't do it, she will die."

"Sherlock could still prove that you created a false identity, even without the code," Rose said calmly. She did not mention that she would die, simply that Moriarty would not get off.

"You need a little extra incentive?" Moriarty asked with a slimy smile at Rose. "His friends will die if he doesn't."

"John," Sherlock breathed.

"Not just John. Everyone. Three bullets. Three gunmen. Three victims."

"Who?" Rose asked.

"John Watson. Greg Lestrade. Martha-Louise Hudson. The three people that Sherlock Holmes loves."

Sherlock was slightly surprised not to hear Mycroft's name on the list. Either their estrangement was well-enough known that Moriarty thought he would fail to step in front of a bullet for his brother, or else Mycroft was too-well protected.

"There's no stopping them now," Moriarty said with a smug smile. "Unless my people see you die. You can have me arrested. You can torture me. You can do anything you like with me, but nothing's going to prevent them from pulling the trigger. Your only three friends in the world. And Rose will die if she isn't the one to give the final push. You gotta admit, that's sexier."

"And I die in disgrace," Sherlock said softly.

"Of course," Moriarty said smiling. "That's the point of this." Moriarty raised an eyebrow and, looking at Rose, nodded toward Sherlock. "Off you pop. I told you how this ends. The Big Bad Wolf is going to blow your house down."

"Can you give us a moment's privacy?" Sherlock asked.

Moriarty shrugged and took a step or two away, as Rose moved over to Sherlock.

"Do you have any brilliant ideas?" Rose asked, wide eyes on his.

"Fourteen," he answered, not bothering to look at Moriarty who they both knew was listening. "And not a single one of them will work. Not and keep you alive."

"I was afraid of something like that. Oh Sherlock, I'm so sorry."

"Don't be. What will you do?"

"Same old life," she said with a half smile, as though it were a joke to her. "Something impossible before breakfast every day, and saving the universe in time for tea." She shook her head, her eyes suddenly serious. "I'll run for my life. I learned that from the best."

Sherlock nodded. He could not speak and could feel his eyes burning in an unfamiliar way.

"Oh Sherlock, I wouldn't have missed it for the world," she said, voice breaking. "You know that, right?"

Again he nodded and gave her a small smile. There were words that he should say. Declarations he should make. He should tell her… but his throat was closed and his tongue was too thick.

Rose glanced back at Moriarty, the only acknowledgment she had given to him since he had stepped away. "You'll shake his hand in Hell, yeah?"

"I will not disappoint you," he said, and his voice was so husky and broken that he hardly recognized it.

"You never have."

"I think we shall never meet again."

"I met the devil once before," Rose said in an offhand way. "I'm sure he's waiting to finish what he started with me." She smiled a fierce smile. "I'll see you in Hell."

Sherlock believed her. "Goodbye, Rose Tyler."

"I'll miss you, Sherlock Holmes."

Rose grabbed the lapels of his coat and pulled him down into a searing, searching, desperate kiss. Sherlock could taste salt, but whether they were her tears or his, he did not know. He felt her fingers inside of his coat, moving in a way that said she had put something into his pocket. He'd hoped for something like that. He wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled her closer, and thanked her wordlessly with lips and teeth and tongue.

From behind them, Jim Moriarty finally cleared his throat, breaking the two apart.

Rose glared over her shoulder at the man and turned back to Sherlock. She glanced over the edge, judging the distance to the ground below. "Any chance you can survive it?"

Sherlock looked down as well. He didn't need to. "No. And even if I did, John would die. And Mrs. Hudson. And Lestrade."

"Don't you ever get tired of always being right?"

"I suppose I'll never find out now."

Rose nodded, pulled him in for one last kiss and, before his eyes had even opened again, shoved him off the roof. She did not watch him fall, instead she looked at John Watson, who had watched her exchange with Sherlock with wide, astonished eyes from where he had just exited his cab.

He would never forgive her.

Rose turned away from her friend and stepped from the edge of the roof.

"What I don't understand is this, Jim Moriarty," she said, voice cold. "If Sherlock chose to die, everyone was saved. If I had chosen to die, everyone would still have died. I didn't really have a choice."

"Because I didn't want you to die," he said, as though this were obvious. "You are the first interesting person I've ever met."

"Oh, I see," she said, continuing to walk slowly toward him. He backed up slowly, as though being stalked by a wild creature. "This wasn't about Sherlock, not any more. It was about me. Sherlock was boring. Like you said- 'side of the angels.' But me? I'm no angel. I'm the Big Bad Wolf."

"Exactly," he said, trying to sound as brave and collected as he had when Sherlock had still been there, even as he continued to retreat from her advance.

"Funny thing about wolves though. An alpha female will protect her mate to the death, and if he dies, she'll avenge him, do you know that?"

"I-I...um..."

Rose had Moriarty backed against a wall. She stood, looking at him with cold eyes. "Oh Jim Moriarty, the Big Bad Wolf is going to gobble _you_ all up."

The last thing that James Moriarty saw before everything went black was a pair of warm brown eyes that lit with golden light, as though the power of the universe was suddenly behind them.

~?~?~?~?~

Molly Hooper wheeled the gurney that held the body of Sherlock Holmes into the morgue.

"Thank you, Molly," came a voice from the corner of the room.

Molly jumped. She had been sure that the room was empty, save for the corpse of Rich Brook, which was lying as still as ever, but when she looked up, there was Rose Tyler standing beside one of the computer monitors, plain as day.

"Is he..." Rose began, but stopped when Sherlock sat up on the gurney and gave her a small smile.

Sherlock tossed the squash ball that Molly had pressed into his hand as he'd lain on the pavement, stunned by the fact that he had hit the ground as softly as if he'd rolled off a foot-high ledge. With Molly's squash ball and a bag of blood that she had spread out from his head, John had seen a dead man, not a living one, and the doctor's life had been spared.

"Brilliant," Sherlock said as Molly caught the black rubber ball. She returned the grin shyly.

"We need to go," Rose said softly. She held up an overlarge hooded sweatshirt. "Put this on, Sherlock, and put up the hood." She then turned to Molly and gave the woman a sudden hug. "Thank you so much, Molly," she whispered in the woman's ear. "We couldn't have done it without you. And thank you for keeping our secrets. I don't know how long we'll be gone but... thank you."

Molly watched the two of them leave together.

~?~?~?~?~

Sherlock pulled out the button-size item that Rose had slipped into his pocket while kissing him and examined it.

"It's an intertial dampener," Rose said as they hurried down the street. "Something we adapted from Sontaran technology."

"Where do we go from here?" Sherlock asked.

"I need some things from my flat. It'll be covered with police soon, so we have to get there now, if we can. Then we'll have to get in touch with Mickey. We'll need a place to lie low for awhile, and I'll have to contact my parents."

As they passed a vendor selling postcards on a corner, Rose snatched one of the stand and continued walking. The proprietor did not even glance her way, though they were among the more watchful of people, Sherlock knew.

"How?" he began. It was a question he had been wondering for an hour. How had he not noticed her on the roof and in the morgue? How could she, now a wanted killer, walk down the streets of London without fear?

"Perception filter," she said. "Just for me, but it's also how Moriarty never found that dampener while I was in his custody. It won't work forever, not once that story hits the papers, so we need some tech from my flat. Fortunately, Jim didn't bother searching my purse or rucksack. We'll just grab them and be on our way. You've a bolt-hole or something, yeah?"

"We need to go to Mycroft," Sherlock said.

"Why?" Rose was quite incredulous.

"He can keep us safe."

"I've got to get back to Cardiff. I can't hide in Mycroft's rooms for the next however long you plan on being dead. I've got to save the universe."


	15. Brother-Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Oh look, Mycroft.**
> 
> **There is an epilogue that will be posted tomorrow, so as of tomorrow, I am willing to answer questions again but only, ONLY if you want spoilers for the next story. You'll have to tell me up front, or I'll keep avoiding answering stuff that I know will spoil.**

Mycroft Holmes was less surprised than a man coming from Scotland Yard with news of Sherlock Holmes' demise at the hands of Rose Tyler would normally be at finding both of those people alive in his study. Despite the media message, Mycroft was too much a cynic to accept the truth of Sherlock's death until he had pressed his own finger to his brother's pulse. That he was in the presence of his apparent killer similarly gave Mycroft no cause for alarm. Had the papers proven correct, he would have spared no expense or energy to have the girl brought down, but as she sat with her head resting on the shoulder of a clearly living Sherlock upon Mycroft's chaise, the elder Holmes brother could take smug comfort in the fact that he had presumed, upon first reading the tale, that there was more to the story than the papers had.

"It is considered impolite to arrive at someone's home unannounced," Mycroft pronounced, voice enough to dry out a martini. "Had I known, I'd have had tea awaiting you."

"Hard for a dead man and his killer to ring 'round for tea in the normal way." Sherlock's riposte was quiet and, for the first time, Mycroft noticed that the girl's eyes were closed and her breathing deep.

"How long have you been here?"

Sherlock pretended to search his memory, though Mycroft knew that his brother would know the time up to the second. "I died about five hours ago, so three and a quarter hours, approximately. Seemed the safest place for the moment."

"My guards said nothing about my having visitors."

"They wouldn't, as they never saw us."

Mycroft frowned. His rooms were among the best-protected in Europe. "How?" he asked.

Sherlock smiled slightly and glanced down at the blonde head resting heavily on his arm. "Rose," was all he said. It was an answer, but no clarification.

Though he might never admit it, the look on Sherlock's face gave Mycroft more pause than a wanted killer and a dead man managing to slip past his defenses. The look was warm. It was honest. It was quite touching, were Mycroft capable of being touched. It reminded him of the child that Sherlock had once been- the one who had wanted to be a pirate. Mycroft had taken that child and tempered him into a man of brilliant intelligence and perfect logic. Though he felt that Sherlock was a bit of a disappointment to his training, he'd never seen his brother look like _that_ \- not as a man. Mycroft did not approve. He had always been the defining force in his brother's life- even if Sherlock hated the fact. To see his brother changing, particularly for a woman, made Mycroft uncomfortable.

"So _She_ is able to get past the best guards and the best-quality intruder-detection systems in the known world, and you think that _She_ is a wise choice of companions?" Mycroft would not give the girl her name. It would make her too important.

" _She_ saved my life." Sherlock's voice remained low, so as not to wake the woman at his side, but his body tensed- fight or flight response activated.

Mycroft recognized his brother's disgust with him. Were Sherlock not trying not to wake the girl, Mycroft had a feeling that he would have been backed into a wall as his younger and stronger brother became violent.

And wasn't it strange? Sherlock being polite for the sake of a girl.

" _She_ threw you off the roof of St. Bart's," Mycroft said, pressing his luck still further, in part to determine how far this new chivalry would extend.

" _She_ needs your help," Sherlock said, ignoring this last.

"Oh yes? _She_ does? You came to me on _Her_ behalf? Or was this _Her_ idea? Did _She_ suggest that you sneak past my guards and disable my alarms and spend time in my study? Are you repeating your mistake, Brother-mine? Giving it all up for a pretty face?" Mycroft suspected that this would do it- would break Sherlock's facade and bring the angry, violent man forth. It would either be the condescending nickname the two used when they were trying to get under each other's skin, or the mention of the woman that had got the better of Sherlock once.

He was wrong, as he so seldom was.

Sherlock smiled a cold, hard smile. This one had none of the warmth and affection that he showed the pretty blonde girl at his side. This was the smile of the man who had thought 10 places ahead of you in the chess game. This was a smile as cold as the galaxy-flecked eyes that met Mycroft's at that moment.

"Oh no, Brother-mine," Sherlock said in a soft, dangerous voice. "Coming here was my idea, you see. She doesn't trust you with her safety, can't imagine why. She trusts me though. Can't imagine why." This last was spoken with a different tone. No sarcasm was evident in the statement- Sherlock honestly did not understand precisely why Rose Tyler would trust her safety into his hands. All he did know what that he refused to let her down. Without him around, John would be un-molested, so his sole duty now was to Rose.

"So you brought her to me for safekeeping? What would you like me to do with her, Sherlock? Pack her in cotton wool? Perhaps you'd like me to call off the hunt for her. That wouldn't be the slightest bit suspicious."

"Mycroft, you are the British Government. Every law-enforcement agency save for Torchwood answers to you, and Torchwood is gone..."

"I somehow doubt that Torchwood is truly gone," Mycroft said disdainfully, his eyes back on the sleeping blonde.

Sherlock smiled down at her again. The smile that he only seemed to give when his eyes were on her in some way, Mycroft observed.

"Torchwood is a shell of its former self, that's true," Sherlock verified. "Not gone, but better forgotten. What it becomes in the future is, I think, up to Rose Tyler. She'll make it brilliant."

"You're welcome to your opinions."

Sherlock's eyes were hard and cold again when they met his brother's. The gentle smile might have lingered for another moment on his lips, but the warmth and affection ( _love?_ ) in his eyes was gone as he looked at Mycroft. "I don't want you to call off the hunt. All I ask is that you throw some pepper into the path of their bloodhounds. Send them to Eastern Europe. That should be safe. Maybe Russia. See if they can't unearth some of Moriarty's spiders while they're at it."

"And where will you be?" Mycroft was genuinely curious. He kept tabs on his brother always, and it would have made him twitchy to truly not know.

"Cardiff," Sherlock said, simply. For the first time, he shifted his position- only slightly and entirely gently to avoid waking the girl beside him- to reach into the pocket of Rose's leather jacket and withdrew a postcard and handed it to his brother. "See that this gets delivered to her parents as well."

Mycroft took the card. It was a photo postcard from London with a picture of the Eye from across the Thames at night. The message was written in the handwriting of a well (if not traditionally) educated woman. Mycroft ran a practiced eye over the writing without taking in the words at first. Her hand was large and rounded displaying openness, even extroversion. The slanting of her letters showed aggression or energy, but there was no violence in her full-stops. There was humor and honesty in her down-sweeps. Mycroft sighed- solely from a graphological analysis he would have considered the writer of this note to be a valuable ally. He finally read the words.

_Dear Mum and Dad,_

_I've gone looking for the Doctor. I need him. If I don't come back, that's where I am- saving the world with him._

_I'm sorry for how things have been between us the past few months. I'll always love you both. Thank you for taking care of me._

_TW is Mickey's now, but if something happens to him, it's yours, Pete. Make it what I would have made it._

_Give Tony all of my love. Every single drop. Tell him about his sister, the Defender of the Earth. Tell him that she saw the most fantastic things that a human being has ever seen, but nothing in the universe was as incredible as the first time she saw him._

_Love,_

_Rose_

She had made no mention of the murder charges. She did not apologize for killing a man; she merely expressed sorrow, forgiveness and love.

"I'll have it sent from Russia in a week or so."

"Norway." A husky, sleep-slurred voice came from the woman on the chaise beside Sherlock. Her eyes opened and she slowly sat up, surveying her surroundings. "Good evening, Mr. Holmes."

"What do you mean, Norway?" he asked with little patience.

"There's a cove about 50 miles outside of Bergen called _Dårlig Ulv-Stranden_ , there's a village nearby. Send the card from there."

"I will try to do that then," Mycroft said as though it were a great inconvenience. In truth, Bergen was no more difficult than Russia, but he did not want the girl to know that.

She rose and, quick as a flash, had the card out of his hand. "It must be sent from _Dårlig Ulv-Stranden_ , if you can't accomplish it, I will go and send it myself."

"And why should that be a threat to me?" Mycroft asked, looking down his nose at her.

"Because, Brother-mine," Sherlock had stepped up behind Rose Tyler and moved her out of the way so that his star-flecked blue eyes could meet Mycroft's cold pewter. He continued, "if something happens to her that you could have prevented, it isn't Torchwood or Pete Tyler who will come after you. No." Sherlock took another step closer, crowding Mycroft to the point that he stepped back and found his back, literally, against the wall. "It will be me who comes and finds you, Mycroft. Because no one- not Torchwood, not Mickey Smith, not Pete Tyler, not the President herself has the ability to destroy you that I have. So you will protect her, and in so doing, you will protect yourself."

Sherlock stepped back, and Mycroft found that he could breathe again. He was intrigued and concerned at his brother's protective behavior toward this girl. This sentiment would get Sherlock killed, Mycroft had no doubt.

He turned to Rose Tyler who was fiddling with some electronic device that looked like a mobile phone or a music player, though not a brand that Mycroft was familiar with.

"Who is the Doctor?"

Rose looked up and raised her eyebrows. "An old friend."

"An old friend who can get you off a murder charge?"

"What murder charge, Mr. Holmes? My victim stands before you, rude, arrogant, and alive as ever. Unless Sherlock feels obligated to have me charged with assault for having thrown him from the roof, I stand before you guiltless."

"Then why run, Ms. Tyler?"

Rose looked at Mycroft for a long, telling moment. She did not want to answer the question, not really. She also knew better than to lie. So she told a truth that he would not understand. "This world must do without me for a time."

"And Sherlock?"

"He had to die to save Mrs. Hudson, to save Greg and… John." Rose's voice broke on the last name. She had a feeling that John would never forgive her. Not even if Sherlock came back alive- she had killed his best friend. She had thrown the man who had given him a new lease on life off the roof of his alma mater. She shook her head to clear it. "He needs to stay dead until Moriarty's empire is broken."

"And what happened to Moriarty?"

"You don't know?" Rose sounded surprised.

"He was found on the roof of St. Bart's, dead of a heart attack."

"He must have seen something that scared him to death."

Rose Tyler's voice was cold. Her eyes were cold. Looking at her, Mycroft could believe that she might be able to scare James Moriarty to death.

Mycroft changed tactics in a flash.

"I could put you both to work breaking the back of the beast."

"No," Rose said, quietly. "Sherlock is free to do as he pleases, but I've work to do. Miles to go before I sleep," she added, whimsically.

"In Cardiff?" Mycroft sneered.

Rose did not even bat an eye. "In Cardiff," she confirmed.

"And you, Sherlock?" Mycroft turned to the other man, hoping to find him more sensible than the girl. "Are you going to languish in Cardiff while leaving my men to bring down Moriarty's organization?"

Sherlock did not rise to Mycroft's bait; instead he smiled his cold smile. "I've been working solid for several years, Mycroft, I think I've earned a bit of a vacation. Cardiff seems a good spot to relax for awhile."

Both Mycroft and Rose snorted.

"But surely you would consider…" Mycroft began, but was cut off immediately by Sherlock.

"Mycroft," the younger man cried, "you cannot change my mind. I am going to Cardiff with Ms. Tyler and shall be out of the world for some time. I will contact you when I can be reached again but, in the meantime, enjoy the peace and quiet."

"And who shall protect you, brother-mine?"

"I don't need…" Sherlock began, but was cut off.

"Never fear, Mr. Holmes," Rose said firmly. "I'll keep him in trouble. He'll be in the most capable of hands."

Rose was amused to note the creeping colour that suffused the cheeks of both Holmes brothers. She had intended no entendre, but if they were inclined to take her comment that way, she would not mention it.

"We need to go, Sherlock. Mick is waiting on us. My being _indisposed_ for several days has put us behind schedule." She ignored the darkening of Sherlock's eyes at her mention of her capture by Moriarty. "A dubious pleasure, as ever, Mr. Holmes," she said to Mycroft, a sparkle in her eye and a peek of tongue between her teeth as she smiled.

"Farewell, Brother," Sherlock said, formally.

Mycroft extended his hand. "William," he said, simply.

Sherlock frowned. "Don't call me that."

Rose and Sherlock left the room. Mycroft went to his computer and pulled up the video feed to watch them leave, but there was no trace of them on it. They had disappeared, as if into thin air.


	16. Epilogue: At the Graveside

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Tissue warning... again. Sorry.**

Two weeks later, Sherlock and Rose returned to London for his funeral. Rose suggested that it was a bit egotistical (not to mention morbid) to attend one's own funeral. Sherlock only shook his head and led her to the chapel in the graveyard.

They stood together at the back of the church, protected by their perception filters. The representation was tiny. There was John and Mrs. Hudson, the latter leaning on the doctor's shoulder and crying quietly. Greg Lestrade sat stiff, clearly uncomfortable. Molly Hooper and Sally Donovan sat side-by-side, ignoring each other. Pete, Jackie, and Tony filled out the last of the group. John glared at the Tylers, but everyone else just ignored them.

"Where is Mycroft?" Rose whispered into Sherlock's ear.

"He would never come to something as emotional as this," he answered.

"And your parents?"

Sherlock shrugged. "Mycroft will have told them the truth, but… I'm not sure why they aren't here."

"Not sure why my parents are here," Rose admitted.

The vicar asked them all to bow their heads. Rose and Sherlock abstained, watching the pathetic group of mourners as they supplicated their God for Sherlock's eternal soul.

After the prayer, everyone was dismissed. There was no graveside service. The two spectres in the back of the chapel watched nearly everyone pile into cars and leave, only Mrs. Hudson and John remained behind. The two of them walked the short distance to the polished black gravestone bearing the name Sherlock Holmes.

Rose and Sherlock moved silently to a tree near the grave. They listened to their friends converse.

"He was such a difficult man," Mrs. Hudson was saying. "He didn't deserve this though. Didn't deserve to die like this. He was infuriating though. All the marks on my table and the noise. Firing guns off at one in the morning…"

"Yeah…" John said, agreeing but also trying to interrupt.

"Bloody specimens in the fridge. Imagine! Keeping bodies where there's food. And the fighting! Drove me up the wall with all his carryings on!"

"Um…"

"And that it was Rose. I liked her so. Had her in my flat countless times, and to think she was a killer all this time."

"Mrs. Hudson," John said, loud enough to stop her. "Would you mind… could you give me a moment?"

"Oh yes, of course. I'll just leave you alone to… you know."

When Mrs. Hudson had walked away, John stood for a long moment, just looking at the grave.

"You…" he began, his voice breaking. He cleared his throat and began again. "You told me once that you weren't a hero. There were times that I didn't even think you were human. I thought that she made you better- more human, but I was wrong. You were the best man and the most human… human being that I have ever known before she ever wormed her way into our lives, and I will never forgive her for taking you away. I will hunt her down and she will pay for this, I promise you, Sherlock. I was alone and I owe you that much."

Rose nearly gasped at the ugly look on John's face.

"So… yeah, I guess that's it," John said, turning away and taking a few steps. Suddenly he turned back, returned to the grave and began again. "Please, there's just one more thing. One more thing. One more miracle, Sherlock, for me. Don't be… dead. Would you do that, just for me? Just stop it, stop this…"

He stood for another long moment, watched by Sherlock and Rose. A strong, good man who had been pushed to the breaking point. This time when he walked away from the grave, he kept going.

Rose turned to look at Sherlock. She reached up and brushed a tear from his cheek and took his hand.

"We have to go save the universe, Sherlock. John will have to keep London safe without us for a time."

* * *

**So that's it... not a nice place to end it, I know, and not when it's going to be almost two months before I post again. But I will be back, I promise. Sometime in May, so keep me on your author alerts. Follow me on Tumblr if you want news about how writing is going (or me complaining about studying for the GRE, you'll probably get both). This has been quite a trip, and it's very much not over yet!**


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